We ate our supper under a quiet, grey mood.  An air of tragedy seemed to hang over us ... for the life of me I couldn’t understand what had become of Paul’s good-natured, rude jocosity.  Why he had grown into a silent, sorrowful man....

* * * * *

“You kin bunk up with Paul to-night, Johnnie,” announced Rachel, when it came bedtime.

Paul had already slunk off to bed right after supper.  It was dark in the room when I got there.

“Paul, where’s the light?”

“—­put it out ... like to lie in the dark an’ think,” answered a deep, sepulchral voice.

“Whatever is the matter with you, Paul?”

“Ain’t you heered?  Ain’t Ma told you?”

“No!”

Paul struck a match and lit the lamp.  I sat on the side of the bed and talked with him.

“Ain’t you heered how I been married?” he began.

“So that’s it, is it?” I anticipated prematurely, “and you weren’t happy ... and she went off and left you!”

“Yes, she’s left me all right, Johnnie, but not that way ... she’s dead!”

And Paul stopped with a sob in his throat.  I didn’t know what to say to his sudden declaration, so I just repeated foolishly, “why, I never knew you got married!” twice.

“Christ, Johnnie, she was the best little woman in the world—­such a little creature, Johnnie ... her head didn’t more’n come up to under my armpits.”

There followed a long silence, to me an awkward one; I didn’t know what to do or say.  Then I perceived the best thing was to let him ease his hurt by just talking on ... and he talked ... on and on ... in his slow, drawling monotone ... and ever so often came the refrain, “Christ, but she was a good woman, Johnnie ...  I wish you’d ‘a’ knowed her.”

At last I ventured, “and how—­how did she come to die?”

“—­baby killed her, she was that small ... she was like a little girl ... she oughtn’t to of had no baby at all, doctor said....”

“I killed her, Johnnie,” he cried in agony, “and that’s the God’s truth of it.”

Another long silence.

The lamp guttered but didn’t go out.  A moth had flown down its chimney, was sizzling, charring, inside ...  Paul lifted off the globe.  Burnt his hands, but said nothing ... flicked the wingless, blackened body to the floor....

“But the baby?—­it lived?”

“Yes, it lived ... a girl ... if it hadn’t of lived ... if it had gone, too, I wouldn’t of wanted to live, either!...”

“That’s why I’m workin’ so hard, these days, with no lay-offs fer huntin’ or fishin’ or anything.”

* * * * *

The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over the death of his tiny wife ... “’she was that small you had a’most to shake out the sheets to find her,’ as Josh useter say,” said Rachel gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother.