pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood, staying itself by the
slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left it in its low cradle
asleep, and it must have waked and clambered out and crept to the barrier
and been crying for her there; its small face was soaked with tears.

She ran forward with long leaps out of the cornfield and caught it to her
neck and mumbled its wet cheeks with hungry kisses. "Oh, my honey, my
honey! Did it think its mother had left--"

She stopped at the word with a pang, and began to go about the rude place
that was the simple home where after years of hell she had found an
earthly heaven. Often she stopped, and wondered at herself. It seemed
impossible she could be thinking it, be doing it, but she was thinking and
doing it, and at sundown, when she knew by the eager shadow of a man in
the doorway, pausing to listen if the baby were awake, all had been
thought and done.



V


The emotional frenzies, recurring through the day, were past, and she
could speak steadily to the man, in the absence of greeting which often
emphasizes the self-forgetfulness of love as well as marks the
formlessness of common life: "Your supper's waitin' for you, Laban; I've
had mine; you must be hungry. It's out in the shed; it's cooler there. Go
round; baby's asleep."

The man obeyed, and she heard him drop the bucket into the well, and lift