ak, an' holds out her arms. Mr. Loneway, he hardly
heard me go in, I reckon--leastwise, he looks at me clean through me
without seein' I was there. An' she hugs the kiddie up in her arms an'
looks at me over the top of its head as much as to say she understood
an' thanked me.

"'Its ma is went off,' I told 'em apologetic, 'an' I thought maybe you'd
look after it awhile,' I told 'em.

"Then I went out an' put oranges all around the boy brother on the hall
floor, an' I hustled back downstairs.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, brisk, 'I've got two dollars too much,' says
I--an' I reck'n the cracks in them walls must 'a' winked at the notion.
'What do you say to a game o' dice on the bread-plate?' I ask' 'em.

"Well, one way an' another I kep' them two there for two hours. An'
then, when the game was out, I knew I couldn't do nothin' else. So I
stood up an' told 'em I'd go up an' let Mr. Loneway know they was
there--along o' his wife bein' sick an' hadn't ought to be scared.

"I started up the stairs, feelin' like lead. Little more'n halfway up I
heard a little noise. I looked up, an' I see the boy brother a-comin',
leakin' orange-peel, with the kid slung over his shoulder, sleepin'. I
looked on past him, an' the door o' Mr. Loneway's sittin' room was open,
an' I see Mr. Loneway standin' in the middle o' the floor. I must 'a'
stopped still, because something stumbled up against me from the back,
an' the two constables was there, comin' close behind me. I could hear
one of 'em breathin'.

"Then I went on up, an' somehow I knew there wasn't nothin' more to wait
for. When we got to the top I see inside the room, an' she was layin'
back on her pillow, all still an' quiet. An' the little new pink jacket
never moved nor stirred, for there wa'n't no breath.

"Mr. Loneway, he come acrost the floor towards us.

"'Come in,' he says. 'Come right in,' he told us--an' I see him smilin'
some."

XIV

AN EPILOGUE

When Peleg had gone back to the woodshed, Calliope slipped away too. I
sat beside the fire, listening to the fine, measured fall of Peleg's
axe--so much more vital with the spirit of music than his flute; looking
at Calliope's brown earthen baking dishes--so much purer in line than
the village bric-a-brac; thinking of Peleg's story and of the life that
beat within it as life does not beat in the unaided letter of the law.
But chiefly I thought of Linda Loneway. Linda Loneway. I made a picture
of her name.

So, Calli