“Ray,” she said, “where is Beltran?” Only silence replied to her.  He lay and stared up at her in a fixed and glassy glare.  Breathless silence.  Then Ray groaned, and turned his face to the wall.  Vivia blew out the light.

* * * * *

The weeks crept away with the setting-in of the frosts.  Little Jane’s heart was heavy for all the misery she saw about her, but she had no time to make moan.  Ray’s amputated ankle was giving fresh trouble, and after that was well over, he still kept his room, refusing food or fire, and staring with hot, wakeful eyes at the cold ceiling.  Vivia lingered, subdued and pale, beside the hearth, doing any quiet piece of work that came to hand; no one had seen her shed tears,—­she had shown no strenuous sorrow; on the night of Ray’s return she had slept her first unbroken sleep for months; her nerves, stretched so intensely and so long, lay loosely now in their passionate reaction; some element more interior than they saved her from prostration.  She stayed there, sad and still, no longer any sparkle or flush about her, but with a mildness so unlike the Vivia of June that it had in it something infinitely touching.  She would have been glad to assist little Jane in her crowded duties, yet succeeded only in being a hindrance; and learning a little of broths and diet-drinks every day, she contented herself with sitting silent and dreamy, and transforming old linen garments into bandages.  Mrs. Vennard, meanwhile, waited on her nephew and bewailed herself.

But for little Jane,—­she had no time to bewail herself.  She had all these people, in fact, on her hands, and that with very limited means to meet their necessities.  It was true they need not experience actual want,—­but there was her store to be managed so that it should be at once wholesome and varied, and the first thing to do was to take an account of stock.  The autumn’s work had already been well done.  She had carried berries enough to market to let her preserve her quinces and damsons in sirups clear as sunshine, and make her tiny allowance of currant and blackberry wines, where were innocently simulated the flavors of rare vintages.  Crook-necked squashes decked the tall chimney-piece amid bunches of herbs and pearly strings of onions.  She and Vivia had gathered the ripened apples themselves, and now goodly garlands of them hung from the attic-rafters, above the dried beans whose blossoms had so sweetened June, and above last year’s corn-bins.  That corn the first passing neighbor should take to mill and exchange a portion of for cracked wheat; and as the flour-barrel still held out, they would be tolerably well off for cereals, little Jane thought.  They had kept only one cow, and Tommy Low would attend to her for the sake of his suppers,—­suppers at which Vivia must forego her water-cresses now; but Janet had a bed of mushrooms growing down-cellar, that, broiled and buttered, were, she fancied, quite equal to venison-steaks.