"I don't know," said he. "You can't do anything. Don't stay here."
But she stood still, staring down at the mound of blankets and Raven again on his knees beside it, his fingers on Dick's wrist.
"Didn't you hear me?" said he curtly. "You're to get the child and come to my house for the night."
"Will he"—and now he saw her mind was with Tenney—"will he be arrested?"
"I hope," Raven allowed himself the bitterness of saying, "I hope he'll get imprisonment for life."
And there was such sternness in the kind voice that Tira turned and went, half running, up the path to the back road and home.
That night at eleven, when the house had quieted, and Raven was alone in the library, he permitted himself a glimpse at the denied emotional aspect of the day. Jerry had got quickly to the top of the hill and Dick had been moved down without disaster, Tenney, white-faced and bewildered, lending his strength as he was told. Raven called upon him for this and that, and kept him by them on the way down to the house, so that Tira might have time to snatch the child and hurry away. At the moment of nearing the house he remembered her, and that if Tenney went directly back by the high road, he might meet her.
"Here!" This to Tenney, who was sagging on behind the sled, and who at once hurried along to his side. "Go back to the hut and see if I've left the key in the door. If it's there, you can lock up and bring it down to me. If it isn't, don't come back."
Then, he assumed, Tenney would go home by the back road, the shortest route. For he would not find the key, which was still in Raven's pocket. Tenney looked at him, seemed to have something to say, and finally managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him now, caught up a stick lying in the dooryard and tossed it to him.
"Here!" said he. "That'll do for a cane."