I thought of calling John, but he gets on his father’s nerves, and Cornelius is in no mood to be patient with anyone. I came up here to my upstairs desk to be alone because he was so cross with me. I just had to get away.—It was such a peaceful time. Why did this have to happen? My first loyalty must be to Cornelius. He is the one who needs me. I must do what he wants, but deep down I am on Nick’s side. I too hate the killing. I understand so well. And I suspect those New York men of lying, or at least of putting as bad a light as possible on Nick’s behavior. Whom are we to trust? Old Pete came up and waited till I was out in the garden to have a word with me. He says it was just a game like cops and robbers—hunting the hunters, he called it—just a little fun. He said the men from New York started the fight. One of them got him in an armlock and he nearly choked, and Nick didn’t move till they jumped him.

“You know Nick,” he said. “He got excited—we all did.”

Poor Old Pete, he was so upset, trying to make light of it all, but I could see he was worried. And when he asked to see Cornelius I had to say no. He just isn’t in any state to face an argument with anyone. And he looks on Old Pete as riff-raff, a good-for-nothing, lazy old man who lives off the dump and gets drunk whenever he can get hold of a six-pack. “Can’t hold his liquor, pees in his pants, and would bend back the ear of an elephant with his everlasting imaginary adventures”—that’s what Cornelius thinks. But John loved him when he was a boy. I can’t forget that. Old Pete was his Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed and Davy Crockett all rolled into one. He has a good heart, that man. And he has what I sometimes think of as the true wisdom of the failure. He stands outside and looks us all over—we who have everything he hasn’t got—and he feels no envy because he likes his life. He has chosen it. He is, in a strange way, the freest spirit in Willard, because, I suppose, he has nothing to lose. Oh dear, what am I to do now? Go to see Jane? She’s so frail one hesitates to lay a burden there. Eben? Why not? I’ll tell Cornelius I have to go to the store. I feel so bottled up. I must talk to someone.