There, she was coming.
She had been upstairs with the baby, putting it to bed.
As he sat brooding near the hearth, she came close to him, and put her little stool at his feet. He then felt her hand upon his own, and knew she was looking up in his face.
He glanced at her. She looked as sweet as ever, until she caught the expression on his face. At first she seemed surprised, then her surprise changed in a wild recognition of his thoughts, and she simply bent her head and clasped her hands, but no words were said.
At length she rose and went away, and he felt glad, for the first time since he had known her, to have her gone.
There was a gun hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved toward the Stranger’s room. He put his hand to the door—when suddenly the struggling fire burst into a glow of light, and the cricket on the hearth began to chirp.
No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The very words in which she had told him of her love for this same cricket were as if just spoken in her sweet, pleasant voice, making household music; and they thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and action.
He moved from the door like a man who had been walking in his sleep when awakening from a frightful dream. He put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he sat down again beside the fire.
The cricket on the hearth came out into the room and stood in fairy shape before him.