She nodded and went to the kitchen, he following, knowing she would allow him to use the indoor pump to wash his face and hands. Half an hour later he saddled and mounted his horse, but he did not turn the horse toward home. Instead, he rode to Felix and Nell’s. When the servant answered his knock at the front door, he asked that Mr. Kendrick be told he waited for him at his office. Felix found him there and gave him a drink, seeing that his hands shook, and his knees had no strength. Then Felix talked quietly to his nephew a few minutes before taking him home to breakfast.

Nell treated his appearance as perfectly natural, ignoring his soiled clothes and unshaved face. Later in the morning Nell and Felix drove to Beulah Land in their buggy, Leon trotting his horse alongside them. Sarah welcomed them as though nothing in Leon’s absence nor the trio’s unannounced arrival were out of the ordinary.

The visitors stayed the day, Felix walking about the fields with Leon, after Leon had bathed and put on fresh clothes, speaking with Roscoe Elk at length, and being seen by all hands; Nell, enjoying her visit with Sarah, which included short times with Rachel and Juanita and the consumption of quantities of lemonade and tea and fresh farm edibles. After supper she and Felix took the buggy home, carrying a hamper of new peas and corn and tomatoes. Nell encouraged Felix to smoke a cigar, the smell of which she rather liked out of doors, although she would not tolerate it in the house.

Alone, Sarah and Leon made their peace by talking of Beulah Land. She told him the trouble she’d had with Roscoe about Pojo. She was careful to tell it just as it happened. “What makes me furious,” she ended by saying, “is that even when we were talking, I could see that he was right in a way, and I was wrong—but I was right really, wasn’t I? We can’t let him bully the people, even when they do wrong.”

“Dear Sarah.” He put his arms about her, and she rested her head against his neck. “I am so very sorry I put you in the way dealing with that.”

“My dear!” Her arms tightened about his waist; then she let him go. “Listen!” They cocked their heads in listening attitudes, and the sound of Juanita’s loving-scolding voice drifted down the stairs. “Rachel has the wide-awakes because of the visitors and your return. Otherwise, she’d have been asleep an hour ago. Since she isn’t, shall we go in to see her? It won’t make any real difference, and she’ll like it so, even if Juanita does not.”

Leon shook his head. “I’ll walk a little in the night air.”

“I’ll go in for just a minute.”

“Good night, Sarah.”