He looked around.  His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.

“I dunno,” he said.

Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other shoulder.

“Try to remember, Tobey.  Try to remember.  Where’d you get the watch, the pretty watch that was in your box?”

He blinked at her.

“The pretty bright thing?  Where did you get it?”

His eyes brightened.  His lips trembled into a smile.

“I found it some place,” he said.  Eagerness to please her shone on his face.

“But where?  What place?” The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.

He shook his head.  “I dunno.”

Mrs. Brenner would not give up.

“You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?” she coached him softly.

He nodded.

“Where’d you see him?” she breathed.

He frowned.  “I—­saw pa——­” he began, straining to pierce the cloud that covered him.

“Blood!  Blood!” shrieked old Mrs. Brenner.  She half rose, her head thrust forward on her shrivelled neck.

Tobey paused, confused.  “I dunno,” he said.

“Did he give you the pretty bright thing?  And did he give you the axe—­” she paused and repeated the word loudly—­“the axe to bring home?”

Tobey caught at the word.  “The axe?” he cried.  “The axe!  Ugh!  It was all sticky!” He shuddered.

“Did pa give you the axe?”

But the cloud had settled.  Tobey shook his head.  “I dunno,” he repeated his feeble denial.

Munn advanced.  “No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see.  Tobey, you’ll have to come along with us.”

Even to Tobey’s brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have penetrated, for he drew back.  “Naw,” he protested sulkily, “I don’t want to.”

Dick Roamer stepped to his side.  He laid his hand on Tobey’s arm.  “Come along,” he urged.

Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp.  Tobey woke to terror.  He turned to run.  In an instant the men surrounded him.  Trapped, he stood still, his head lowered in his shoulders.

“Ma!” he screamed suddenly.  “Ma!  I don’t want to go!  Ma!”

He fell on his knees.  Heavy childish sobs racked him.  Deserted, terrified, he called upon the only friend he knew.

“Ma!  Please, Ma!”

Munn lifted him up.  Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner of the room.

They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner’s sight as quickly as they could.  The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.

Mart closed the door.  Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when Tobey had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run.  She looked as though she might have been carved there.  Her light breath seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.