"No," said Raven. "I didn't find it through you."
Tenney was ingenuously taken aback.
"There is one way," he said, "into the sheepfold—only one."
He turned about, muttering, and Raven, looking after him, thought he was an ugly customer. For a woman to be shut up alone with him, her young, too, to defend! It was like being jailed with an irrational beast. But Tenney paid no further attention to him. He walked away, swinging his dinner pail, down across the meadow to the lower woods, and Raven, after the fringe of birches had closed upon him, hurried off to the hut. He did not expect to find her. The pail in Tenney's hand was sufficient evidence, even if the man's going to his work were not. Tenney would never have abandoned his search or his waiting for her, and if he had, he would not have delayed to pack a dinner pail. The hut was empty of human life, but the bricks were warm. She could not have left until the early morning. Mechanically he piled kindling near the hearth. But curiously, though the hut was warm not only with the fire but the suggestion of her breathing presence, it was not she who seemed to be with him but Old Crow.
He went back to the house and found Amelia in traveling dress, her face tuned to the note of concentration when something was to be done. She was ready. She had the appearance of the traveler needing only to slip on an outer garment to go, not merely from New Hampshire down to Boston, but to uncharted fastnesses. It meant, he found, this droll look of being prepared for anything, not the inconsiderable journey before her but a new enterprise for him. And he would have to be persuaded to it. Well, she knew that. She met him in the hall.
"John," she said, with the firmness of her tone in active benevolences, "I have asked Jerry to take me to the train. I want you to go with me."
"Me?" said Raven, unaffectedly surprised. "What for?"
"For several things. If Dick is in any sort of trouble——"
"He's not," said Raven. "Take my word for that."
"And," she concluded, "I want you to see somebody."