At the end of the stalls a row of feed bins and beyond that a door let into the wall and he went through there and was in a small slope-roofed shed built onto the side of the barn. The shed empty. Nothing there at all. At one end a small hearth and rough chimney. Against the inner barn wall, high up, was a set of eight spaced wooden pegs the thickness of his wrist, a foot long and curved up. Harness pegs. That was all. Even the hearth had been swept clean. The room was dark, just a single paned window set high on the shed wall, dark with grime, not cleaned by the rain. Foster squatted and looked around him, studying the walls, the floor. And finally could see where there had once stood a bedstead built into the wall like the one in the cabin he was staying in. Along the wall at the end of where the bed had been, found some nails where clothing had once hung. Thought he could see patches on the floor where perhaps a chair had been scraped back and forth from a table over the years. That was all. At the end of the shed was a door that opened into the yard and he went out through there. Against the side of the carriage barn, right up close under the eaves, was a stack of stovewood. The stack had at some point come right up to cover over this outer entrance to the small shed. Where Peter had lived.

A pall of dense sour woodsmoke hugged close down over the yard. He looked at the house and from one of the two chimneys a thick oily spume rose up, the color of wet black wool. He crossed over to the house and went in through the kitchen. In the dining room he found Mebane down on his knees before the grate. Stacked up smoldering against the andirons was the stack of ledgers from the table. Beside Mebane was a pile of yellow newspaper, from which he was removing sections and crumpling them against his chest and then feeding them under the ledgers, prodding with a poker lying before him on the hearth. His cane was upright, within reach, against the hearthside. He looked around when Foster came in and then back at his work, reaching for another sheaf of newspaper.

“What’re you doing?”

Without looking back at him Mebane spoke. Into the fire. “Nothing. Burning trash.”

“What was in those books?”

Mebane took up the poker and stabbed hard at the mess before him and the ledgers gave way, sliding one off the other. Fresh fire licked up. “Nothing.” He stabbed again. Still not looking back.