She reached out and took his hand. It was very hot. Two bright spots burned in his cheeks and his eyes had that peculiar, hollow, sunken look she had seen once or twice before. Two days had passed. The realization that it was but two days shocked her. "Funny," he was saying. "That night--you remember--I met old Burrus coming out of your house. I wondered then what he could be doing. Well--he was just on my trail. Fact." "Yes," she said. "He brought Aunt Susie a hot-water bottle. But you mustn't talk too much, Joe." She squeezed his hand very softly. "Well," he went on, as though intensely interested in the idea, "you know what he was for Uncle Buzz? Well, next he must put his jinx on me." He chuckled softly. "His kind always have it in for--my kind. It is funny. As I went down the road, after leaving your house, you remember?" She nodded. "Well, I soon saw from the road that something had happened. I went down across the field up to the fence. Things were scattered all over the ground, and some of 'em floating down the creek--I could see in the moonlight. 'Serves you right, you old skinflint,' I said to myself. 'But it's none of your business.' So I turned about and went back to the road. Couldn't help feeling kinda glad about it." He paused and drew a deep, painful breath. "I guess it's all just retribution. Shouldn't have enjoyed a man's misfortune. I missed the edge of the road, slipped, and fell across the big eight by eight that ties the bridge to the bank, and that's all I remember. Old Burrus pulled me out of the creek himself." He withdrew his hand and moved slightly in the bed, as if easing himself somewhere. "It _was_ funny, wasn't it?" She gazed into his face. Something was stirring within her over which she seemed to have no control--a tenderness, a mothering instinct, a vast hurt deep within herself. She suddenly realized that she could have had him, although he had not offered himself. Nor had he ever asked for anything, probably never would. The realization singularly made him seem all the more her own. "You mustn't work yourself up, Joe. Be quiet. I want you to get well." Just how fervently she wished it, and with what anxiety, she suddenly knew. The sight of his peaked, upturned face, staring at the ceiling, with the bright red spots on his cheeks, was more than she could bear, and she rose to her feet and walked over to the open window.