“I wish I'd l'arnt to pray when I was a boy,” he said, lowering his arms. “Somehow I feel like I've at last come through. I've come from the shadow of the Valley of Death out into God's eternal light. Then I'd like to put in a word at the Throne fer Nelson. Ef I knowed how to say it, I'd beg the Almighty to turn Hillhouse down. Hillhouse kin git 'im another one, but Nelson never kin—never in this world! He hain't got that look in the eyes. He's got a case o' woman as bad as I have, an' that's sayin' a lots.”
Pole turned and slowly retraced his steps. Going in and sitting down by the fire again, he heard his wife's voice rising and falling in a sweet monotone. After a while she ceased speaking and came back to the fire.
“So you had to wake 'em,” he said, tenderly, very tenderly, as if his soul had melted into words.
“I tried, Pole, but I couldn't,” she made answer. “I shuck 'em an' shuck 'em. I even tuck little Billy up an' rolled 'im over an' over, but he was too dead tired to wake. So I give up.”
“But I heard you talkin',” Pole said, wonderingly.
“Yes, I had to talk to somebody, Pole, an'—well, I was a-tellin' 'em. They was asleep, but I was a-tellin' 'em.”
She sat down by him. “I ain't a-goin' to close my eyes to-night,” she went on, softly; “but what does it matter? I reckon thar won't be no sleepin' in heaven, an' that's whar I am right now, Pole.”
She put the side of her flushed face down on his knee and looked into the fire.