“You had to do it, I suppose,” he said, feeling his way. “But you can’t change things as they are, Nick.”

“Someday, when they’ve wrecked it all and there aren’t any wild flowers, they’ll be sorry. Someday they’ll learn.” He wiped his mouth. “Too late by then.” There was only weariness in the tone, and in the way he dragged his feet.

How speak to a wound? Joel felt young and vulnerable beside the iron in the man beside him. He himself had never felt anything as fiercely as Nick felt about the wild in nature. Nick would not hesitate, he was pretty sure, to kill a man for the sake of a deer or a woodcock—or, maybe, even a flower. This was the ground of Nick’s being. But all I am, Joel thought, is a kind of loose energy, undirected. How can I say anything to him? Pity would be out of place.

They had reached the door. Joel let Nick go in alone and went off to the barn to sit there on a chopping block and think. After a while, Ellen called out to him, “Joel, where are you?”

The kitchen was empty. No Nick.

“He’s lying down,” Ellen said, rocking, and keeping her hands busy with a piece of sewing. “What happened? You’d better tell me.”

Joel noted the glass with a bunch of arbutus in it on her table. So, whatever his state, Nick had somehow brought it home to her; must have stuffed it into a pocket. Joel had tears in his eyes. He felt weak. Here he had found shelter, been treated kindly, surely more kindly than he deserved—and now he was the messenger with bad news.

“I’m afraid the road agent is pretty mad,” he said. “I think he means to go after Nick.”

“I suppose they got into a fight.” Ellen watched Joel put his head into his hands. “You’d better have a cup of coffee. If you’ve never seen Nick in one of those spells, it can be scarifying. How badly was Ed hurt?”

“A bloody mouth—nothing serious.”

She nodded and bent her head to her sewing.

“How can one care too much?” Joel blurted out, making a helpless gesture. “But Nick does. I mean …”

Ellen laid down her sewing and went to the stove. Her gestures were mechanical. Her mind was clearly elsewhere. After she had poured two cups of coffee, she stood and looked out at the maple and the tiny perfect umbrellas of leaves, some quite pink like flowers, that had appeared on it overnight.