and cautiously rubbed the perspiration out of his eyes and from his
forehead. It had been a cruelly hot, close afternoon, and the stifling
burial under the heavy bedding, and the excitement, had left him
feverishly hot and trembling. It was already growing dark outside,
although he could not know that until he lifted the quilts an inch or
two and peered up at the dirty window-panes. He was afraid to rise, as
yet, and flattened himself out with an impatient sigh, as he gathered
the bedding over his head again and held back his breath to listen.
There may have been a minute or more of absolute silence in which he
lay there, and then his blood froze to ice in his veins, his breath
stopped, and he heard, with a quick gasp of terror, the sound of
something crawling toward him across the floor of the outer room. The
instinct of self-defence moved him first to leap to his feet, and to
face and fight it, and then followed as quickly a foolish sense of
safety in his hiding-place; and he called upon his greatest strength,
and, by his mere brute will alone, forced his forehead down to the
bare floor and lay rigid, though his nerves jerked with unknown,
unreasoning fear. And still he heard the sound of this living thing
coming creeping toward him until the instinctive terror that shook him
overcame his will, and he threw the bed-clothes from him with a hoarse
cry, and sprang up trembling to his feet, with his back against the
wall, and with his arms thrown out in front of him wildly, and with
the willingness in them and the power in them to do murder.

The room was very dark, but the windows of the one beyond let in a
little stream of light across the floor, and in this light he saw
moving toward him on its hands and knees a little baby who smiled and
nodded at him with a pleased look of recognition and kindly welcome.

The fear upon Raegen had been so strong and the reaction was so great