VII
Half an hour after that Will Bissell chanced by Chet’s farm and saw Chet fetching pick and shovel from the shed, and something in the other’s bearing made him ask: “What’s the matter, Chet? Something wrong?”
Chet looked at him slowly, said in a hoarse voice: “I’ve killed Old Tantrybogus. I’m going down to put him away.”
And he went through the barn and left Will standing there, down into the wood to a spot where the partridges love to come in the late fall for feed, and made a bed there and lined it thick with boughs and so at last laid Old Tantry to sleep.
His supper that night was solitary and cheerless and dreary and alone. But—Will Bissell must have spread the news, for while Chet was washing the dishes someone knocked, and when he turned Mary Thurman opened the door and came in.
Chet could not bear to look at her. He turned awkwardly and sat down at the kitchen table and buried his head in his arms. And Mary, smiling though her eyes were wet, came toward him. There was the mother light in her eyes, the mother radiance in Mary Thurman’s face. And she took Chet’s lonely head in her arms.
“There, Chet, there!” she whispered softly. “I reckon you need me now.”