She would like to be rid of Leon until he became a man and developed a true man’s sense of responsibility and obligation. She chewed her way doggedly through the food on her plate, carefully courteous to Myrtis when she appeared to serve a dish, but not genial. She never was anyway, so her preoccupation today should raise no special comment. Slowly, as if self-generating, a plan presented itself to her.

Bonard had not yet returned to Savannah to continue his education; he had extended his Christmas visit beyond its first allotment. He should, however, be leaving soon. Why not have Leon go with him? Leon was fifteen. There would be tutors at the college willing to coach him if he were discovered to be not yet fully qualified to attend regular classes. That would assure his being away for months, well beyond the time when Clovis would have her child. “Out of sight, out of mind,” Lovey had said, and it was so. If the plan worked reasonably well, Leon would be absent from Beulah Land, except perhaps for short vacations, until he was indeed a grown man.

When she finished the unwanted and untasted meal, she found Lovey, whose eyes were red from the tears she had shed on seeing Leon off to town. Deborah asked Lovey to send Ezra to her. She sent for Ezra because he was already involved in the affair, and because he was a man of dignity and discretion.

When he attended her, she asked him to ride over to Oaks and tell Mr. Benjamin Davis that she needed his advice and help most urgently and would be ever obliged to him if he could ride back with Ezra, or follow him soon after, to receive her confidence. Ezra listened gravely to Deborah, nodded to indicate that he understood her instructions, and took his leave.

As Ezra rode to Oaks, Leon was making his way in the opposite direction to Highboro and a future that would keep him away from Beulah Land, except for those short visits Deborah had grudgingly allowed to herself might be necessary, for a long time. His eyes smarted, and his nose ran until he wiped it with his jacket sleeve. It wasn’t cold, but he felt cold as he wondered what would happen to him next.

High up in the hay barn, warm in a hill of loose hay, Selma reposed with a copy of Robinson Crusoe, one of the few story books she knew to be to her taste. She liked it because she felt a kinship with Crusoe’s aloneness, and she shared his interest, in his case enforced, in what is called natural history.