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Updated: June 11, 2025
They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan did not go in to Dick.
Raven, glancing up at him, saw he was white and sick and Tira said: "He never can stan' the sight o' blood." Evidently the irony of it did not strike her at all, but Raven wrinkled his brows over it. He sent her here and there, for water to wash the wound and for clean cloth. He rolled a bandage and put it on deftly while Tenney stared.
And the cool breeze which was Old Crow told him that although Tira must be rescued, if it could be brought about, it must not be through any of the jungle ways. She must not be drugged by jungle odors and carried off unwillingly, even to the Holy City itself, by that road. He and Tira yes, he and Tira and Nan would march along together with their eyes open.
But scarcely had the impetuous forces met before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands. "Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the door."
Her mouth twitched at the tight corners, her eyes kindled. "It would be fun," said she. "Besides, think how silly to keep Charlotte provisioning you and tugging over to spend nights, poor Charlotte!" "I really stayed," said Nan, temporizing, "for this Tira of yours and Tenney's." This form of statement sounded malicious to her own ears, but not to his.
Be that as it may, no trace of displeasure was visible upon her face or in her voice or manner, when, a few minutes afterwards, she stood by the side of the unsuspicious Tira, in the back veranda of the house, holding in her hand a plate containing a pat of butter she had just borrowed from the Doctor's housekeeper, while the latter, peeping through the curtain of vine-leaves, gazed at as pretty a spectacle as just then could have been seen anywhere in Belfield.
Tira considered. "You see," she answered finally, "I've got my walkin' papers, as you might say. The baby's gone. 'Twas the baby that made trouble betwixt his father an' me. An' now there won't be no reason for my hidin' in the shack up there or even passin' the time o' day with you, either of you. An' that's a kind of a runnin' away, ain't it? Shouldn't you call it runnin' away?"
Now, here we are with Tira up against it. She's got to make a quick decision. And she's made it." "Do you call her by her first name?" asked Dick, leaping the main issue to frown over the one possibly significant of Raven's state of mind. "Yes," said Raven steadily, "I rather think I call her by her first name.
He turned and took, with a difficulty half assumed, the few steps to the wood-box, selected a couple of sticks and, with a quiet deftness that seemed to indicate a mind bent only on the act itself, put them in the stove. Tira watched him, fascinated by him, the strength in abeyance, the wayward will.
He was mortally anxious for Tira, still face to face with brute irresponsibility, and when the mental picture of it flamed too lividly and could not be endured, he threw down his book and hurried up to the hut, to find her. She never came. The fire, faithfully laid for her, was unlighted. The room breathed the loneliness of a place that has known a beloved presence and knows it no more.
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