She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthday nights, so did he live them over.  But none could know it; for he did not speak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead.  Martha Ryck looked up at last into her husband’s face.

“Amos, if she should ever come back!” He started, his eyes freezing.

“She won’t!  She—­”

Would he have said “she shall not?” God only knew.

“Martha, you talk nonsense!  It’s just like a woman.  We’ve said enough about this.  I suppose He who’s cursed us has got his own reasons for it.  We must bear it, and so must she.”

He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about the room; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife.  Muff, rousing from his slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of.  She used to love the dog,—­the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; he was always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found her asleep with Muff’s black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pink arms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream.

Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature; but he never had.  If he had been a woman, he would have said he could not.  Being a man, he argued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth keeping.

“Always in the way, Muff!” he muttered, looking at the patient black head rubbed against his knee.  He was angry with the dog at that moment; the next he had repented; the brute had done no wrong.  He stooped and patted him.  Muff returned to his dreams content.

“Well, Martha,” he said, coming up to her uneasily, “you look tired.”

“Tired?  No, I was only thinking, Amos.”

The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient mouth, the whole crushed look of the woman, struck him freshly.  He stooped and kissed her forehead, the sharp lines of his face relaxing a little.

“I didn’t mean to be hard on you, Martha; we both have enough to bear without that, but it’s best not to talk of what can’t be helped,—­you see.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t think anything more about the day; it’s not—­it’s not really good for you; you must cheer up, little woman.”

“Yes, Amos.”

Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage; she stood up, putting both arms around his neck.

“If you’d only try to love her a little, after all, my husband!  He would know it; He might save her for it.”

Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time for prayers.  He took down the old Bible in which his child’s baby-fingers used to trace their first lessons after his own, and read, not of her who loved much and was forgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms.

When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was asleep that night, she rose softly from her bed, unlocked, with noiseless key, one of her bureau drawers, took something from it, and then felt her way down the dark stairs into the kitchen.