Once, when they had been parted and Sarah’s buggy was several lengths in the lead, Edna said, “She called you ‘Bruce’ back yonder.” He nodded. “Nobody else does.”

“Well,” he said equably, “it’s my name, the very one you gave me.”

Half an hour later and well past noon the buggies went separate ways after their inhabitants had exchanged a dozen “last” goodbyes. Sarah drove briskly along the drive from the main road, through the orchard and around the house to her back door, where Sugar met her to take the horse and buggy oft to the barn. Dinner was ready, she was certain, and she didn’t like to make Myrtis wait. She hoped Leon had come home and that Felix was with him.

She had started in—Rachel and Juanita had gone before her to tell the kitchen girls of their adventure in town—when her eye was caught by the un-Sunday sight of a dozen men who had evidently been working, since they carried pitchforks on their shoulders. They were just approaching one of the barns. A minute later she found them inside putting their tools away. Addressing herself to the one named Rex, a man she knew to be intelligent and responsible, she asked where they had been working. He glanced at the others; all shuffled and appeared uneasy. “Over to the Elk Place, missy,” Rex said.

“Doing what?”

“Pitching late scattered hay.”

“You don’t work on Sundays; it’s your time off.”

“Well’m,” Rex said, “that’s it, you see. It’s time off for us here, but Mr. Elk he needed this work done, and we was paying out a little debt we owed.”

“Have you done this before?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

“Now and again, yes’m. Mr. Elk lets us work it off when we can’t pay it off.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes, yes,” Leon said impatiently. “I saw him and talked to him. It’s all right.”

Leon was tired and irritable. He had come home midafternoon from the timber inspection trip with Felix, who had left him at the main road and gone home, saying Nell hadn’t been pert that morning and that he was eager to see her. Leon had had no dinner, and as soon as he got into the house, Sarah flew at him about the men who’d worked that morning for Roscoe Elk. While he ate cold leftovers, she made him say he would ride right over to Roscoe’s for an explanation.

“Why is it all right?” she now said. “They are our men.”

“They worked for him because they owe him money, and they were working on time we left them free; so how does it hurt us?”

“Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t,” he said impatiently.