A stir came from the room at the bottom of the hallway, then the thin wail of a baby. Ryan raised his hand.
“Sh-sh-sh,” he hissed, and made a warning gesture. “Sh-sh-sh; the old woman, she don’t know. I done it fer you—was willing you meet here. But I didn’t know you’d do that, not that. And the papers full of it—I don’t know—God help me,” he ended with a groan.
“'Where’s Nell?” said Collins, and he shook Ryan by the shoulders; “where’s Nell; quick; where’s Nell?”
“She was to be here—let go, man, let go my shoulder—she’s not come. Wish to God she had—I never knew ’twould come to this—be still—for God’s sake don’t go in there, not in there!”
But Collins, brushing him aside, had strode into the kitchen.
Mrs. Ryan was bending over the cradle—the same cradle where she had bent years before, and it was in the same corner, and from it came the acid cry of her last born. Side by side, by
