"'I can't help it, sir,' she said stolidly. And suddenly she clapped
her hands and looked right and left. 'And there's the baby. I am
so frightened. He wanted me just now to give him the baby. I can't
understand what he says to it.'

"'Can't you ask a neighbour to come in tonight?' I asked.

"'Please, sir, nobody seems to care to come,' she muttered, dully
resigned all at once.

"I impressed upon her the necessity of the greatest care, and then had
to go. There was a good deal of sickness that winter. 'Oh, I hope he
won't talk!' she exclaimed softly just as I was going away.

"I don't know how it is I did not see--but I didn't. And yet, turning
in my trap, I saw her lingering before the door, very still, and as if
meditating a flight up the miry road.

"Towards the night his fever increased.

"He tossed, moaned, and now and then muttered a complaint. And she sat
with the table between her and the couch, watching every movement and
every sound, with the terror, the unreasonable terror, of that man she
could not understand creeping over her. She had drawn the wicker
cradle close to her feet. There was nothing in her now but the maternal
instinct and that unaccountable fear.

"Suddenly coming to himself, parched, he demanded a drink of water. She
did not move. She had not understood, though he may have thought he
was speaking in English. He waited, looking at her, burning with fever,