"You'd better lock the door. Keep it locked till you go."
She was sitting before the fire, her head bent almost to her knee, her face in her hands. He closed the door and waited until he heard her step and the turning of the key. Then he strode out into the logging road and down the slope. One certainty surged and trembled in him: that he had never been so sorry for anybody in his life.
X
Raven, determinedly shedding his emotion, plunged fast down the hill and into the house where Charlotte was busy in a steam of fragrances from stove and cooking table and Jerry sat smoothing an axe helve.
"See here," said Raven, pulling off his gloves and advancing to the stove, where Jerry, looking mildly up, made room for him, "are you thinning out up on the ridge?"
Jerry nodded.
"That's what you wrote," said he.
"I've changed my mind," said Raven. "It looks mighty well up there as it is, for the present, anyway. Didn't you say there was a lot of gray birch that needed to go down in the river pasture?"
Again Jerry nodded, and Charlotte, evidently not finding this definite enough, put in: