his jaws as he crept up to the window to look in. By standing on
his toes, Casey's eyes came on a level with the lowest inch of
glass,--the window was so high.

Just at first Casey could not see much. Then, when his eyes had
adjusted themselves to the half twilight within, his mind at
first failed to grasp what he saw. Gradually a dimly sensed
dread took hold of him, and grew while he stood there peering in
at commonplace things which should have given him no feeling save
perhaps a faint surprise.

A fairly clean, tiny room he saw, with a rough, narrow bed in one
corner and a box table at its head. From the ceiling hung a
lantern with the chimney smoked on one side and the warped, pole
rafter above it slightly blackened to show how long the lantern
had hung there lighted. A door opposite the tiny window was
closed, and there was no latch or fastening on the inner side.
An Indian blanket covered half the floor space, and in the corner
opposite the bed was a queer, drumlike thing of sheet iron with a
pipe running through the wall; some heating arrangement, Casey
guessed.

In the center of the room, facing the window, a woman sat in a
wooden rocking chair and rocked. A pale old woman with dark
hollows under her eyes that were fixed upon the pattern of the
Indian rug. Her hair was white. Her thin, white hands rested
limply on the arms of the chair, and she was rocking back and
forth, back and forth, steadily, quietly,--just rocking and
staring at the Indian rug.