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She made no reply: gave no sign at all that she had even heard him: only leant motionless against the wall of hay as if some heavy, invisible blow had pinned her there. And he, pitying her, swearing at himself for his inadvertence, sat uncomfortably through the silence that had fallen upon them, fidgeting with his pockets, wishing that he could think of something to say to her.

He began at last, tentatively, ingratiatingly—

“I say, Laura! I say——”

She lifted her head and looked at him, searchingly, as one looks at the last link in a chain, in a chain of circumstantial evidence that began far away with medicine and little white shawls; with black sashes and a whispering nurse, and the visit to Gran’papa Valentine. She fingered those links, one by one, recognizing, testing them, and so arrived at last at the big, worried boy sitting by her in the hay.

“Mother is dead,” she said to him, in a voice that was entirely unemotional. She was confirming his statement, not questioning it.

“Oh, you know—perhaps—I daresay I muddled names—made a mistake,” he suggested, because he could not help it. And knew well enough that he had made none.