are was a good animal, fast and strong. She feared and she
hated Hazen. I could see her roll her eyes backward at him as he
adjusted the traces. He called to me without turning:

"Shut the door! Shut the door! Damn the cold!"

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 the 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 evil malevolence in his baby eyes. I have
sometimes thought the grey devils must have left just such hate-bred
babes as this in France. Also, he was deformed--a twisted leg. The women
of the neighbourhood 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 red