“You are a wicked man, Joseph Dylks,” the woman solemnly answered. “And I'm sorry I asked you anything. You _couldn't_ do good, if you tried.” She pulled her sunbonnet across her face, as if to hide it for shame, and went back slowly toward the cabin. “Salvation!” Dylks shouted after her, and gave his equine snort. He began to sing, as he took his way through the woods, “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair We wretched sinners lay.” At first he sang boldly, filling the woods with the mocking of his hymn. But at the sound of footsteps crackling over the dry falling twigs toward him intermittently, as if they paused in question, and then resumed their course toward him, his voice fell, brokenly silencing itself till at the encounter of a man glimpsed through the trees, and pausing in a common arrest, it ceased altogether. “Who are you?” Dylks demanded of the slight, workworn figure before him. “Laban Billings,” the man faltered. “Well, then, Laban Billings, make way for the Lord thy God,” Dylks powerfully returned, and as if he had borne the man down before him, he strode over the place where he had stood, and lost himself in the shadows beyond. Laban hurried on, stumbling and looking back over his shoulder, till he found himself face to face with Nancy at the door of the shed behind the cabin. She was looking, too, in the direction Dylks had ceased from their sight in the woods. They started from each other in mutual fright. “Nancy!” he entreated. “I didn't see you. I--I wasn't comin' to see you, indeed, indeed I wasn't. I just thought I might ketch sight of the baby--It's pretty hard to do without you both! And I was just passin'--Well, they've knocked off work at the Corners, so's to come to the miracle at Hingston's Mill to-night--But I'll go right away again, Nancy.” “You needn't, Laban. Come in and see the baby.” “Nancy!” he uttered joyfully. Then he faltered, “Do you think it will be right--” “Oh, who knows what's right?” she retorted. Then at his stare, she demanded, “Didn't you run across anybody in the woods?” “Yes.” “What did he look like?” “Like what they tell the Leatherwood God looks like. They're half crazy about him at the Corners. They don't hardly talk about anything else.” “Did you think he looked like God?” “More like Satan, I should say. He's handsome enough for Satan.” “It was Joseph Dylks.” “Yes, I s'picioned that.” “And he's been here, wanting me to go away with him--Over-the-Mountains.” Laban made a dry sound in his throat and it was by a succession of efforts that he could say, “And--and--and--” “Oh, could you _ask_, Laban?” she lamented. “You're my husband, don't you know it?” At the sound of her lament a little voice of fear and hope answered from the cabin. The father-hunger came into the man's weak face, making it strong. “Come in and see our baby, Laban.”