I slid the door shut behind me. There was within the barn the curious chill warmth which housed animals generate to protect themselves against our winters. “It will snow,” I told Hazen. “I was not sure you would go.” He laughed crookedly, jerking at the trace. “Snow!” he exclaimed. “A man would think you were personal manager of the weather. Why do you say it will snow?” “The drift of the clouds--and it’s warmer,” I told him. “I’ll not have it snowing,” he said, and looked at me and cackled. He was a little, thin, old man with meager whiskers and a curious precision of speech; and I think he got some enjoyment out of watching my expression at such remarks as this. He elaborated his assumption that the universe was conducted for his benefit, in order to see my silent revolt at the suggestion. “I’ll not have it snowing,” he said. “Open the door.” He led the mare out and stopped by the kitchen door. “Come in,” he said. “A hot drink.” I went with him into the kitchen. His wife was there, and their child. The woman was lean and frail; and she was afraid of him. The countryside said he had taken her in payment of a bad debt. Her father had owed him money which he could not pay. “I decided it was time I had a wife,” Hazen used to say to me. The child was on the floor. The woman had a drink of milk and egg and rum, hot and ready for us. We drank, and Hazen knelt beside the child. A boy baby, not yet two years old. It is an ugly thing to say, but I hated this child. There was an evil malevolence in his baby eyes. I have sometimes thought the gray devils must have left just such hate-bred babes as this in France. Also, he was deformed--a twisted leg. The women of the neighborhood sometimes said he would be better dead. But Hazen Kinch loved him. He lifted him in his arms now with a curious passion in his movement, and the child stared at him sullenly. When the mother came near, the baby squalled at her, and Hazen said roughly: “Stand away! Leave him alone!” She moved back furtively; and Hazen asked me, displaying the child: “A fine boy, eh?” I said nothing, and in his cracked old voice he mumbled endearments to the baby. I had often wondered whether his love for the child redeemed the man; or merely made him vulnerable. Certainly any harm that might come to the baby would be a crushing blow to Hazen. He put the baby down on the floor again and said to the woman curtly: “Tend him well.” She nodded. There was a dumb submission in her eyes; but through this blank veil I had seen now and then a blaze of pain. Hazen went out of the door without further word to her, and I followed him. We got into the sleigh, bundling ourselves into the robes for the six-mile drive along the drifted road to East Harbor. There was a feeling of storm in the air. I looked at the sky and so did Hazen Kinch. He guessed what I would have said and he answered me before I could speak. “I’ll not have it snowing,” he said, and leered at me.