Raven's face did not alter from its set attention.
"Yes," said Nan, "the car. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way."
He got his coat and cap, and they went down to the garage together. Shortly, they were slipping out of the yard, and she, with one oblique glance, saw Amelia at a window in her nightie, and forgot to be frightened for the instant while she thought Amelia would be accounting for this as one of her tricks and compressing her lips and honorably saying nothing to Dick about it. Raven turned down the road and Nan wondered if she had even spoken the name of Mountain Brook.
"Let her out," said she.
Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively against the wind of their going:
"The baby died. Tira lay on it in her sleep. That was Monday. It was buried yesterday. At Mountain Brook. Tira went back to Mountain Brook yesterday afternoon, to carry the baby some flowers"—the moment she said this she saw how silly it was and wondered why she had not seen it, why she had been such a fool as not to be frightened sooner. "She said she would spend the night with those Donnyhills." But had Tira thrown in the Donnyhills to keep Nan from being frightened?
Raven gave no sign of having heard. They were speeding. The east behind them was a line of light, and the mists were clearing away. When they turned into the narrow river road, the gray seemed to be there waiting for them, for this was the gorge with the steep cliff on one side and the river on the other, always dark, even at midday, with moss patches on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and tumbling: always the sound of falling water.
"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy tribe, shif'less."
"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there, before she married."
"That's where we go, is it?"