“But she will,” said Wesley.  “She must!  She can’t help it when things are explained.”

“I notice she isn’t hurrying any about coming home.  Do you know where she is or what she is doing?”

“I do not.  But likely she will be along soon.  I must go help Billy with the night work.  Good-bye, Katharine.  Thank the Lord you have come to yourself at last!”

They shook hands and Wesley went down the road while Mrs. Comstock entered the cabin.  She could not swallow food.  She stood in the back door watching the sky for moths, but they did not seem to be very numerous.  Her spirits sank and she breathed unevenly.  Then she heard the front screen.  She reached the middle door as Elnora touched the foot of the stairs.

“Hurry, and get ready, Elnora,” she said.  “Your supper is almost spoiled now.”

Elnora closed the stair door behind her, and for the first time in her life, threw the heavy lever which barred out anyone from down stairs.  Mrs. Comstock heard the thud, and knew what it meant.  She reeled slightly and caught the doorpost for support.  For a few minutes she clung there, then sank to the nearest chair.  After a long time she arose and stumbling half blindly, she put the food in the cupboard and covered the table.  She took the lamp in one hand, the butter in the other, and started to the spring house.  Something brushed close by her face, and she looked just in time to see a winged creature rise above the cabin and sail away.

“That was a night bird,” she muttered.  As she stopped to set the butter in the water, came another thought.  “Perhaps it was a moth!” Mrs. Comstock dropped the butter and hurried out with the lamp; she held it high above her head and waited until her arms ached.  Small insects of night gathered, and at last a little dusty miller, but nothing came of any size.

“I must go where they are, if I get them,” muttered Mrs. Comstock.

She went to the barn after the stout pair of high boots she used in feeding stock in deep snow.  Throwing these beside the back door she climbed to the loft over the spring house, and hunted an old lard oil lantern and one of first manufacture for oil.  Both these she cleaned and filled.  She listened until everything up stairs had been still for over half an hour.  By that time it was past eleven o’clock.  Then she took the lantern from the kitchen, the two old ones, a handful of matches, a ball of twine, and went from the cabin, softly closing the door.

Sitting on the back steps, she put on the boots, and then stood gazing into the perfumed June night, first in the direction of the woods on her land, then toward the Limberlost.  Its outline was so dark and forbidding she shuddered and went down the garden, following the path toward the woods, but as she neared the pool her knees wavered and her courage fled.  The knowledge that in her soul she was now glad Robert Comstock was at the bottom of it made a coward of her, who fearlessly