He drew up a chair to the hearth and was about to take it when she spoke again. The blood ran into her cheeks, as she did it, and she put her request with difficulty. It seemed to Raven that she was suddenly engulfed in shame.
"Should you just as soon," she asked, "take the key inside an' lock the door?"
She put it humbly, and Raven rose at once.
"Of course," he said. "Good idea."
He locked the door and came back to his chair and she began, never omitting to share her attention with the child:
"I know who you be. It's too bad this has come upon you. I'll have to ask you not to let it go any further."
Raven was about to assure her that nothing had come upon him, and then he bethought himself that a great deal had. She had looked to him like the Mother of Sorrows and, though the shock of that vision was over, she seemed to him now scarcely less touching in her beautiful maternity and her undefended state. So he only glanced at her and said gravely:
"Nobody will know anything about it from me. After all"—he was bound to reassure her if he could—"I've nothing to tell."
Her face flashed into an intensity of revolt against any subterfuge, the matter was so terrible.
"Why, yes, you have," said she. "Isr'el Tenney chased his woman up into the woods with an axe. An' you heard him yellin' after her. That's God's truth."