discovered Cash's pipe, and was caught sucking it
before the fireplace and mimicking Cash's meditative pose with a comical
exactness that made Bud roar. Even Cash was betrayed into speaking a
whole sentence to Bud before he remembered his grudge. Taken altogether,
it was a day of fruitful pleasure in spite of the storm outside.

That night the two men sat before the fire and watched the flames and
listened to the wind roaring in the pines. On his side of the dead line
Bud rocked his hard-muscled, big body back and forth, cradling Lovin
Child asleep in his arms. In one tender palm he nested Lovin Child's
little bare feet, like two fat, white mice that slept together after a
day's scampering.

Bud was thinking, as he always thought nowadays, of Marie and his own
boy; yearning, tender thoughts which his clumsy man's tongue would never
attempt to speak. Before, he had thought of Marie alone, without the
baby; but he had learned much, these last four days. He knew now how
closely a baby can creep in and cling, how they can fill the days with
joy. He knew how he would miss Lovin Child when the storm cleared and
he must take him away. It did not seem right or just that he should give
him into the keeping of strangers--and yet he must until the parents
could have him back. The black depths of their grief to-night Bud
could not bring himself to contemplate. Bad enough to forecast his own
desolateness when Lovin Child was no longer romping up and down the dead
line, looking where he might find some mischief to get into. Bad enough
to know that the cabin would again be a place of silence and gloom and
futile resentments over little things, with no happy little man-child to
brighten it. He crept into his bunk that night and snuggled the baby up
in his arms, a miserable man with no courage left in him for the future.

But the next day it was still storming, and colder than ever. No one
would expect him to take a baby out in such weather. So Bud whistled and
romped with Lovin Child, and would not worry about what must happen when
the storm was past.

All day Cash brooded before the fire, bundled in his mackinaw and
sweater. He did not even smoke, and though he seemed to feel the cold
abnormally, he did not bring in any wood except in the morning, but let
Bud keep the fireplace going with his own generous supply. He did not
eat any dinner, and at supper time he went to bed with all the clothes
he possessed piled on top of him. By a