Old Crow

Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The In...

"Oh, I have the house, of course," said Nan, "the one here and the place at Wake Hill. She had those only for her lifetime, you know. Yes, you're the sole legatee."

Nan sat looking at him with an air of patient alertness, ready, he saw, to meet what he had to say and do the best she could with it. He had an irritated apprehension that, as h...

What, in the name of all that was mysterious, he reflected, had made Anne--and so early--assume the burden of an unasked allegiance to him? His family and hers had been next-doo...

The next day Nan telephoned Raven that she was taking train for New York for perhaps a week's stay with the Seaburys. These were her nearest relatives, cousins at a remove Raven...

Then Raven realized that Charlotte herself was responsible for his faith in Jerry's bargaining prowess. She had hypnotized him into considering Jerry a great fellow at a trade a...

He remembered every step of the way, what he might find if he could sweep off the snow or wait until June and let the mounting sun sweep it according to its own method. Here at...

"Yes," she answered soberly, and also with a kind of wonder at a man's accomplishing so dull an observance. "We go twice every Sunday, an' Sunday school an' evenin' meetin' besi...

Evidently the name of God was for Sundays. But he was uneasily reassured. He was, at least, in a way of sense, delighted. He put his face to hers and thickly bade her kiss him....

"Do you reject Him?" Tenney, too, had his day's work on his mind and he spoke rapidly, with a patent show of getting his exhortation done in time to fall into step with Jerry, a...

She opened the door just before he could put out his hand to it, passed him without a look, and came in. He shut the door and followed her. Raven got up from his chair and stood...

This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the child. He returned to his old grave...

So these two, with all the forces of probability and beckoning fortune pushing them together, could not approach even within hailing distance. It was the hideous irony of a worl...

"I went up the path," said Nan, in a half absent way, as if what she was telling seemed far less important than the perplexing issues it had bred in her. "I said good evening to...

"I don't know," said Nan. "That or something. Deaf, maybe. But not right. I hear something. It's Charlotte. Kiss me, Rookie. On my forehead"--he did it--"on my forehead, on my r...

But the minute she left the window, he put down his book, got his hat and coat from the hall, and went out through the kitchen where Charlotte was sponging bread.

Raven turned abruptly, walked to a window and stood there looking into the dark. The challenge of her face was impossible to bear. Suppose she asked him again if he believed it?...

"Now about religion. A great many people go to church and find comfort in it, and they come home and eat meat for their dinners, meat killed--they don't know how it is killed. S...

"Now, why doesn't He care? For the first time, I knew there was a reason that was not a cruel reason. I knew His reasons were all good. And I saw that though He could not break...

"Yes. He smelled like the soap the boys used to buy, the ones that lived 'down the road a piece.' He frightened her, just his sitting down beside her. And it put some kind of a...

"Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney might as well think him a devil of...

They were hungry and in high spirits, and they ate and talked a great deal. Nan meant to remember what they talked about. Even the words were so dear to her she would have liked...

Dick, looking down upon Nan, had that congealed aspect she alone had the present power of freezing him into. She knew all the possibilities of that face. There was the angry loo...

"So we will be," said Nan. She was retreating toward the door. There were simple natural things she wanted at that moment. She wanted to go to him, put her arms about him, mothe...

"I do curse him," he muttered. "I curse him for that--not bein' my flesh an' blood." With the renewed accusation, his anger against her seemed to mount like a wave and sweep him...

This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if she had put a hand out through th...

He began with the day when he had found Tira in the woods. He touched on the facts briefly, omitting to confess what the woman looked to his dazzled eyes. It was a drawing auste...

"So far as that goes," said Nan boldly, "I've put it into hers. I saw he wasn't right. I told her I'd do everything in my power, in anybody's power, to have him"--she hesitated...

"I can never," he said, "get over the monstrous queerness of it all. Here's a woman that's got to be saved, and she's so infernally obstinate we can't save her. When I think of...

Eugene Martin had driven at a quick pace through the back road and down again to the point where it met the highway. He had stuffed Tira's apron into his pocket, and through his...

When she had gone Raven, sitting there by Dick, who did not speak again, listened for the murmur of voices from the library. Would they keep companionable vigil, the two women,...

And while he implied it was freedom from the tyranny of the bequest, she knew it implied, too, a continued freedom from Aunt Anne. Would he ever have set his face so fixedly tow...

It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for: chiefly to feel herself active in the ai...

"Overlaid," she repeated, with the slightest tinge of scorn. "That's what women do sometimes, big heavy women! Roll over on the little creatur's an' lay on 'em so 't they can't...

Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively against the wind of their going:

"He had to," said Nan. "I came up and listened and I heard voices. So I went back again and asked Charlotte for sandwiches. And Dick would come. But I carried the basket." She h...

"You remember yourself how disgusted the authorities were when he trotted about like a homeless dog and insisted on being arrested for a crime they knew he didn't commit. Poor o...