ere in a hole over there. What do you
say we drive over to the hop ranch after dinner and see if she wants
anything?"

Hilma put down the plates and came around the table and kissed him
without a word.

As soon as their dinner was over, Annixter had the carry-all hitched
up, and, dispensing with young Vacca, drove over to the hop ranch with
Hilma.

Hilma could not keep back the tears as they passed through the
lamentable desolation of the withered, brown vines, symbols of perished
hopes and abandoned effort, and Annixter swore between his teeth.

Though the wheels of the carry-all grated loudly on the roadway in front
of the house, nobody came to the door nor looked from the windows. The
place seemed tenantless, infinitely lonely, infinitely sad. Annixter
tied the team, and with Hilma approached the wide-open door, scuffling
and tramping on the porch to attract attention. Nobody stirred. A Sunday
stillness pervaded the place. Outside, the withered hop-leaves rustled
like dry paper in the breeze. The quiet was ominous. They peered into
the front room from the doorway, Hilma holding her husband's hand. Mrs.
Dyke was there. She sat at the table in the middle of the room, her
head, with its white hair, down upon her arm. A clutter of unwashed
dishes were strewed over the red and white tablecloth. The unkempt room,
once a marvel of neatness, had not been cleaned for days. Newspapers,
Genslinger's extras and copies of San Francisco and Los Angeles dailies
were scattered all over the room. On the table itself were crumpled
yellow telegrams, a dozen of them, a score of them, blowing about in the
draught from the door. And in the midst of all this disarray, surrounded
by the published accounts of her son's crime, the telegraphed answers
to her pitiful appeals for tidings fluttering about her head, the
highwayman's mother, worn out, abandoned and forgotten, slept through
the stillness of the Sunday afternoon.

Neither Hilma nor Annixter ever forgot their interview with Mrs. Dyke
that day. Suddenly waking, she had caught sight of Annixter, and at once
exclaimed eagerly:

"Is there any news?"

For a long time afterwards nothing could be got from her. She was numb
to all other issues than the one question of Dyke's capture. She did not
answer their questions nor reply to their offers of assistance. Hilma
and Annixter conferred together without lowering their voices, at her
very elbow, while she looked vacantly at the floor,