Mrs. Brenner shuddered.  “Seems like you could shut up a spell!” she complained.

The old woman’s voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering.  Olga’s commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them.  Mrs. Brenner went back to the stove.  But her eyes kept returning to the clock and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed heavily into the very room.

Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle crashing out of Mrs. Brenner’s nerveless hand and brought a moan from the dozing old woman!  It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that it went echoing about the room as though a disembodied spirit were shrieking under the rafters!  It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a heart-broken scream!

“Tobey!” cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.

The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling, “Blood!  Blood on his hands!  I see it.”

“That was on the hill,” said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.

She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with agonized intentness.  But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again.  At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn.  There was no other sound.  Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her mouthing.

Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling lips, her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between the siren-call.

Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house.  Mrs. Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the steps paused there, and threw it open.

The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son his inevitable pasteboard box, grimy with much handling, clutched close to his big breast, and in it the soft beating and thudding of imprisoned wings.

Mrs. Brenner’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper, “Tobey!” but it rose shrilly as she cried, “Where you been?  What was that scream?”

Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering, “I’m cold!”

She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood shaking himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.

“What was that scream?” she asked him tensely.  She knotted her rough fingers as she waited for his answer.

“I dunno,” he grunted sullenly.  His thick lower lip shoved itself forward, baby-fashion.

“Where you been?” she persisted.

As he did not answer she coaxed him, “Aw, come on, Tobey.  Tell Ma.  Where you been?”

“I been catching butterflies,” he answered.  “I got a big one this time,” with an air of triumph.

“Where was you when you heard the scream?” she asked him cunningly.

He gave a slow shake of his head.  “I dunno,” he answered in his dull voice.

A big shiver shook him.  His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his knees before the open oven-door.