Mrs. Rowland, standing motionless in the single exit through which
Mueller had gone, did not answer.

"Better come and finish, Margaret," suggested her husband.

Again there was no answer, and Rowland, after eating a few mouthfuls,
pushed back his chair. Even then she did not speak, and, rising, the man
made his way across the room to put an arm with rough affection around
his wife's waist.

"Are you, too, scared at last?" he voiced gently.

The woman turned swiftly and, in action almost unbelievable after her
former unemotional certainty, dropped her head to his shoulder.

"Yes, I think I am a bit, Sam. For baby's sake I wish we'd gone too; but
now,"--her arms crept around his neck, closed,--"but now--now it's too
late!"

For a long minute, and another, the man did not stir but involuntarily
his arms had tightened until, had she wished, the woman could not have
turned. He had been looking absently out the door, south over the
rolling country leading to the deserted settlement.

In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was
still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the
trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a
spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank
and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland