He stood beside her, barring her way to the door.

"But you'll try, Molly, won't you--you'll try ?" he cried.

She looked at him again with begging eyes and stepped around him, and said breathlessly as she reached the door: "Oh, I don't know, John--I don't know.

I must think about it." She felt her way down the stairs, and stopped a minute to compose herself before she crossed the street and walked wearily up the hill.
That night at supper Colonel Culpepper addressed the assembled family expansively.

"The ravens, my dears, the ravens.