Taking a dime from his pocket, he tossed it lightly in the air and waited for it to fall. "Heads for me, tails for Fletcher." The coin spun for an instant in the gloom above him and then dropped noiselessly to the floor. When he lifted the lantern and bent over it he saw that the head lay uppermost. CHAPTER VIII. In Which Christopher Triumphs When he entered the house a little later Cynthia met him in the kitchen doorway with an anxious frown. "I heard a noise, Christopher. What was it?" "A man wanted me about something. How is mother resting?" "Not well. Her dreams trouble her. She grows weaker every day, and the few hours she insists upon spending in her chair tire her dreadfully." "There is nothing that she needs, you say?" "No; nothing. She has never felt our poverty for an instant." The furrow between his eyebrows grew deeper. "And you?" he asked abruptly, regarding her fixedly with his intent gaze. "What under heaven are you up to at this hour?" Glancing down at the ironing-board before her, she flushed painfully through the drawn grayness of her face. "I had a little ironing to do," she answered, "and I wanted it all finished to-night. Mother needs me in the day." Pushing her aside, he seized the iron and ran it in a few hasty strokes over the rough-dry garment which she had spread on the board. "Go to bed and leave these things alone," he insisted. "Oh, Christopher, you'll spoil it!" cried Cynthia, clutching his arm. He returned the iron to the stand and met her reproachful look with a gesture of annoyance. "Well, I'm going to sleep, if you aren't," he said, and treading as lightly as possible in his heavy boots, went along the little platform and upstairs to his garret room. Once inside, he undressed hastily and flung himself upon the bed, but his thoughts spun like a top, and wild visions of Will, of Fletcher, and of Molly Peterkin whirled confusedly through his brain. When at last he lost consciousness for a time, it was to dream restlessly of the cry of a hare that the hounds had caught and mangled. The scream of the creature came to him from a thick wood, which was intersected by innumerable small green paths, and when he tried vainly to go to the rescue he lost himself again and again in the wilderness of trails. Back and forth he turned in the twilight, crushing down the underbrush and striking in a frenzy at the forked boughs the trees wrapped about him, while suddenly the piteous voice became that of a woman in distress. Then, with a great effort, he fought his way through the wood, to see the mangled hare change slowly into Maria Fletcher, who opened her eyes to ask him why he hunted her to death. He awoke in a cold sweat, and, sitting up in bed, leaned for air toward the open window. A dull ache gnawed at his heart, and his lips were parched as if from fever. Again it seemed to him that Maria entreated him across the distance.