ick, and white, and trembling. "Go, Tom,
please, please. There's your hat. I'll take care of her. I know just
how."

Left to herself, Saxon worked with frantic haste, assuming the calm she
did not possess, but which she must impart to the screaming bedlamite
upon the floor. The light frame house leaked the noise hideously, and
Saxon knew that the houses on either side were hearing, and the street
itself and the houses across the street. Her fear was that Billy should
arrive in the midst of it. Further, she was incensed, violated. Every
fiber rebelled, almost in a nausea; yet she maintained cool control and
stroked Sarah's forehead and hair with slow, soothing movements. Soon,
with one arm around her, she managed to win the first diminution in
the strident, atrocious, unceasing scream. A few minutes later, sobbing
heavily, the elder woman lay in bed, across her forehead and eyes a
wet-pack of towel for easement of the headache she and Saxon tacitly
accepted as substitute for the brain-storm.

When a clatter of hoofs came down the street and stopped, Saxon was able
to slip to the front door and wave her hand to Billy. In the kitchen she
found Tom waiting in sad anxiousness.

"It's all right," she said. "Billy Roberts has come, and I've got to go.
You go in and sit beside her for a while, and maybe she'll go to sleep.
But don't rush her. Let her have her own way. If she'll let you take her
hand, why do it. Try it, anyway. But first of all, as an opener and just
as a matter of course, start wetting the towel over her eyes."

He was a kindly, easy-going man; but, after the way of a large
percentage of the Western stock, he was undemonstrative. He nodded,
turned toward the door to obey, and paused irresolutely. The look he
gave back to Saxon was almost dog-like in gratitude and all-brotherly in
love. She felt it, and in spirit leapt toward it.

"It's all right--everything's all right," she cried hastily.

Tom shook his head.

"No, it ain't. It's a shame, a blamed shame, that's what it is." He
shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't care for myself. But it's for you.
You got your life before you yet, little kid sister. You'll get old,
and all that means, fast enough. But it's a bad start for a day off.
The thing for you to do is to forget all this, and skin out with your
fellow, an' have a good time." In the open door, his hand on the knob
to close it after him, he halted a second time. A spasm contracted his
brow. "Hell!