Dot was sitting rocking alone in the firelight; the little mother had gone to a sudden case of illness in a cottage near, and Wooster had taken her. The child's little soft head lay against her breast, she held both its bare little feet in her hand. There were tear-wet places on her cheeks, and the eyes that looked down on the child were full of tenderness, but her lips were rather tightly closed. She could not forget the verandah, and Larrie's burst of laughter. He strode across the room. 'Give me the child,' he said. Her arms closed tightly round it. 'He is mine, mine,' she said. 'Give him to me,' he cried again. She sprang to the door her eyes gleaming, her hands holding the little soft body with desperate firmness. But he was before her, he looked down at her with white face, and eyes blazing with scorn. 'You are not fit to hold him,' he said. She was moving across to the second door clasping her burden convulsively. 'I will die before you shall have him,' she said passionately. 'No you will not,' he said. His words came slowly, there was a horrible note in his voice, 'There is--your lover, you know.' She turned and looked at him, incredulous horror in her wide eyes, her arms loosened their hold a little, she went a step towards him. But the light of madness in his eyes increased, he tore the child from her arms, and carried it away with him out into the night. * * * * * He went slowly down the hill he had come up in such wild haste. He had not felt the night wind before, but now it blew chillily on his burning forehead and quietened the fever in his blood. He took off his coat and wrapped it round the child, which lay warm and sleepy and quiet against his shoulder all the way. There had seemed to be a strange wheel working in his brain lately, it had gone at a maddening rate during his short interview with Dot. But something in the great hush of the grey-blue night stopped it for a time and a sudden calmness and power of reasoning came to him once more. When he reached the cottage he put the child down again in the cot and covered it up warmly. Then he walked about staring at his misery. He knew it had grown utterly past bearing. Everything in the place spoke of Dot, spoke loudly and insistently, the silent piano, the dead flowers in the vases, the foolish little red watering pot on the verandah nail, the small garden boots in the hall corner with the red clay of the roads dried on the heels. When he poured out his coffee at breakfast time he shuddered because he saw beside him the little dear bright face that was not there--when he helped himself to an egg he could not eat it, because the stand held only two, instead of the by custom sacred three.