"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks sometimes."
She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she read the face of the clock.
"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on her breast.
"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.
"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove. Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac eyes met hers.
Mrs. Brenner threw her shriveled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and contemptuous glance.
"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever say—blood!"
The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red! Dripping! I see blood!"
Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she complained.
The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering. Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs. Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed heavily into the very room.