t behind it. She was still hoping, praying dumbly that it might
be, when Young Denny lifted the black-chimneyed lamp from its bracket
on the kitchen wall that night, after he had stood and listened with a
smile on his lips to Old Jerry's hurried departure, and carried it
into the front room which he scarcely ever entered except upon that
errand.

At first she did not believe. She thought it was only a trick of her
brain, so tired now that it was as little capable of connected thought
as her worn-out body was of motion. Hardly breathing she stared until
she saw the great blot of his body silhouetted against the pane for a
moment as he crowded between the lamp, staring across at her, she
knew.

She rose then, rose slowly and very cautiously as though she feared
her slightest move might make it vanish. Young Denny's bobbing
lantern, swinging in one hand as he crossed before the house and
plunged into the thicket that lay between them, was all that convinced
her--made her believe that she had seen aright.

"I can't go--I can't!" she breathed. And then, lifting her head,
vehemently, as if he could hear:

"I want to--oh, you know I want to! But I can't come to you
tonight--not until I've had a little longer--to think."

Almost before she had finished speaking another voice answered, a
soft, dreamy voice that came so abruptly in the quiet house that it
made her wheel like a startled wild thing. She had forgotten him for
the time--that little, stooped figure at its bench in the back room
workshop. For hours she had not given him a thought, and he had made
not so much as a motion to make her remember his presence. She could
not even remember when his sing-song, unending monologue had ceased,
but she realized then that he had been more silent that night than
ever before.

Earlier in the evening when she had lighted his lamp for him and set
out his lump of moist clay, and helped him to his place on the high
stool, she had thought to notice some difference in him.

Usually John Anderson was possessed of one or two unvarying moods.
Either he plunged contentedly into his task of reproducing the
multitude of small white figures around the walls, or else he merely
sat and stared up at her hopelessly, vacantly, until she put the clay
herself into his hands. Tonight it had been different, for when she
had placed the damp mass between his limp fingers he had laid it aside
again, raised astonishingly clear eyes to hers and shaken