“Death . . . Will,” Abbie said. “How the fear of it always hangs over me. If John had died . . .”

“Death,” Will repeated it. “Death . . .” He looked beyond the Lombardy poplars, stared for a moment up into the deepening prairie twilight. “I wonder why we fear it?” He spoke as though to himself. “The naturalness of it! Wild geese flying over . . . cattle coming home . . . birds to their nests . . . leaves to the winter mold . . . the last sleep. How natural they all are, and yet of them all, we fear only the sleep. When my time comes I wish my family and friends could think of it that way . . . without tears.”

“Oh, Will, don’t talk so. If you should be taken away from me, I couldn’t stand it.”

“Oh, yes, you could, Abbie-girl. You could stand it. It’s the people who have loved and then lost their love . . . who have failed each other in some way, who couldn’t stand it. With you and me . . . all we’ve been through together and all we’ve meant to each other . . . with us, it couldn’t be so terrible. Nothing could take away the past from us. You are so much a part of me, that if you were taken away, I think it would seem that you just went on with me. And I’m sure if I were the one taken I would go on with you, remembering all you had been to me.”

So seldom did Will speak that which was in his heart. And now he had spoken. Abbie sat and looked out into the star-filled sky. There were the summer night odors,—clover hay and ripening apples and sweet alyssum. There were the summer night sounds,—cicada and frogs and a crooning bird. There were the summer night movements,—the trembling of the leaves on the poplars, a night hawk dipping low, a bit of lacy cloud slipping across the moon. For a moment, Abbie Deal seemed greater than herself, larger than humanity. For a brief time, a sense of deep wisdom was within her, a flood of infinite strength and peace enveloped her.

I would go on with you . . . remembering . . .

All fall and early winter John, suffering, blue, discouraged, was kept in with his bad foot. It had been a terrible cut, but it was healing; and he was not going to be crippled, thanks to the ministrations of a country doctor with few instruments and meager equipment, but with a sound surgical knowledge. Young Dr. Frederick Baker commended the older doctor’s care of the case with the cheerful condescension of the recent graduate.

By studying at home and taking his tests, John was able to graduate with his class at the academy. Still favoring his foot a little, he went into the field with his father.

That summer of ’90 was the summer of the great drought. Day after day, Will came into the kitchen with the pails of morning milk to say, “Another scorcher. Not a cloud in the sky.”