"Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home in the after-midnight hush.
"You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently.
"No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat, fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest. An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was quiet and well.
"Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick, Matt."
As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank to my knees with a cry. There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. As I lifted it on my arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it was dead. Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as she came to my side.
"Oh," I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, "it's dead. What did it?"
"A dog," answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead lamb back on the ground.
"No, she's too young; some stray," answered Matthew as he look savagely around into the shadows.
"It's the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before I left. I can't bear it all, Matthew--this is too much for me," I said, and I sobbed into my hands as I sank down into a heap against the side of the bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of question.
I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms. Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel that a new day could dawn upon the world. I think from the way I huddled to his strength that he knew that I had given up the fight and that his hour was at hand.