She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman, was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it. At sight of his face, its contrite kindliness, her own set again into its determined composure. She seemed to see that she could not count on aid outside herself and returned again uncomplainingly to her old equilibrium of endurance. "Come back," he said. "She's going down to the house with me. Besides, if she did stay, you'd like her. You'd love her. That's only Nan." He said "Nan" of set purpose. It was the custom of this country folk, when they talked among themselves, to call all alike by their Christian names, even when they scrupulously used the surname in direct address. He meant to reassure her. It was a way of bringing Nan into a friendly nearness. "You've heard of her," he said, "Miss Hamilton's niece. She owns the next house to mine, the Hamilton house. She'll be here this summer. You'll be neighbors. Come back and speak to her." "No," said Tira, in a gentle obstinacy. "I guess I'll be gittin' along toward----" Here she stopped. She did not know what the direction or the end of her journey was to be. "You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round the woods in this snow"--he fell purposely into the country habit of speech--"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?" "I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember havin' one since I was little." The child had resumed the role of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications, and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of moving her lay in him. "Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled--and hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?" he asked. "No," she said, with the same air of gently reassuring him. "I slept 'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all come over him ag'in, an' I had to go." "After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! God!" The invocation sounded as if he also prayed.