He woke before first light exhausted with dreams and sadness. He woke to the smell of breakfast cooking. He hadn’t done that in a long time. He dressed in the dark. Because the room was chill he dug in the valise for the worn blanket-lined canvas shooting jacket that old Doctor Dodge had given him. And went out onto the landing and heard the faint riffle of voices from downstairs. He paused there and then, an invader, went down to the lower hall. Pushed open the door to the kitchen.

The women were bright, dressed both of them for barn work, chirping to him and each other. Behaving as if he’d always been in the house. He accepted coffee from Abigail, the cup a delicate porcelain thing with a winged handle, the heat seeping through as he wrapped his hands around it. Her eyes flashing over him as if noting his discomfort and dismissing it at once. As if some peace had settled overnight in the house without bothering to alert him. He was jangling. He refused breakfast, claiming first the need to see to his dogs. Taking the coffee with him. Feeling both sets of eyes on him as he stepped into the entryshed.

Outside was blueblack, a slice of moon and one big star low in the east. A planet, but which he couldn’t say. He went to the Chrysler and set the coffee on the hood and took cigarettes from the glove box and lighted one and leaned against the car and smoked it down, drinking the coffee. He considered the case of bonded whiskey he’d dug up out of the ground in Bethlehem that was now in the cargo space hidden under the rear seat, alongside his shotguns in fleece-lined wooden cases. He wanted to crack one of those bottles, take a long drink from it. He watched the house. Those women would be out any minute to come to the barns. He finished the smoke and coffee and left the cup on the hood of the car and walked in through the barns to get his dogs. The first door he opened every creature within stirred and cried out someway. And he understood something of Prudence telling him that this was all she wanted or ever needed. Among this he heard the lowing whine of Lovey and the sharp cries of Glow. Through the dim barns, past the murmur and stamp of the horses, into the sheepfold where the bleat rose like water suddenly swept by wind, down the dark walkway to where the dogs heard him and came piling over the gate to greet him. The sheep went quiet. He took the dogs back the way he’d come, out the door into the now-blue dawn. The hills a soft charcoal against the lightened sky. In the yard he met Prudence and Abby, lanterns lit and swinging. Abby stopped beside him.

“Your creatures all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You think you ever might just call me by my name?”