As Floyd woke now in the lean-to, it was still dark; no light came through the crack in the wall just above his eye level; but he knew it was day, or nearly so, and when a moment later he heard the first crowing of a rooster, he smiled and rolled over on his back, raising his knees to make a tent of the single sheet that covered him. It was a new day, and he woke ready for it.

He was glad the wedding was over and hoped that things would quickly settle back into normal order. Unlike most of the others on the place, he did not like holidays or special events that for him disrupted, for them broke up in a welcome way the steady rhythm of life at Beulah Land. He was master of his work, and although much of it was routine, he found interest in a good many things that came his way to do or to mend or make. He was his own man, slave or not. No one told him what to do, not even Roscoe, and he was, if unfulfilled and sometimes restless to find or do something he could not have named, he was not an unhappy man.

When he had dressed, he stepped into the kitchen where he found Ezra at the stove waiting for him. The two men did not speak, but they nodded to each other, and Ezra poured out two cups of coffee, which they drank slowly, remaining standing, each engaged by his own morning thoughts.

Finishing the coffee, Floyd set cup and saucer down on the kitchen table and said, “Going to check my lines.”

“Come with you,” Ezra said. They heard a stirring in the bedroom, and presently Lovey showed herself at the door in her long nightgown that fell to the floor and covered her feet, so that she had to hold it when she walked.

“I’ll get breakfast directly,” she said.

“No hurry,” Ezra told her. “I’m going with Floyd to check his lines.”

She nodded and went back into the bedroom.

They stepped out the back door, leaving it open to let fresh air into the house. By now it was light, although the sun had not yet risen. A friendly hound on his morning tour of the grounds trotted over and sniffed inquisitively at Floyd’s hand. When he nuzzled Ezra’s side as if asking for food, Ezra gave him a not unkind kick, and the two men proceeded on their way.

The sky was high and clear; in the east it had brightened and reddened. A light breeze ruffled the leaves of the high sunflower stalks, and when the men got beyond them into the corn field, they paused and peed, Ezra taking longer about it than Floyd because he was old, and his controls were not as responsive as his son’s.