Niede got up at daylight and drove down to the Devil’s Den and walked for ten minutes in the dark, wet woods before he heard the bell-cow. There had been company at this early milking on three other mornings, but now he was all alone. No guard was at hand any more, so if the cattle had ruined anyone’s field Henry might have to pay for it. His forehead dampened with chilly sweat as that thought came to him … He experienced great difficulty in finding the horses; when found, he cursed them and tied them firmly, each to a separate tree. After consideration, he risked bringing the colt home with him, fastened behind the milk-cart and like to upset it a dozen times. It was late, and he had little more than half the milk he should have had. Those calves had been at the One-Horn and the White-face again, the little esel! He should have bound branches around their necks, with sharp points to gouge the mothers and make them kick the calves away, but then the branches were liable to pin them in the bushes so that they might break their foolish necks. It was bad, having your cows away off in the forest. He kept telling himself, Damn dirty armies. They ought to be put in jail … what I would like to do to them.

After breakfast the sun was smooth and honest above Granite Ridge, and the air was warming rapidly. It would be a hot day, and the little kernels of wheat would dry and grow fat and warm in their splintery husks. The wheat should be cut by tomorrow; tomorrow was July first; you couldn’t wait all summer, rebels or no rebels.

He told his wife, as he pushed away the coffee-pot: “I got those horses tied, down there. I should go and bring them home now, and the cattle too.”

“Better you had brought them yesterday like other folks,” she told him. She did not look forward to wheat-harvest. She was a dull, funny woman. He couldn’t make her out, sometimes.

“And if those damn armies had got them, you would think I was a smart man, ja?”

“The armies never got Codoris’ stock. They never got Sherfys’ nor Trostles’ nor Pitzers’, nor—”

“Ach,” he said, coldly, “you are a fool woman!”

She made no response, but went on washing dishes, the strong soft soap foaming between her red fingers.

“Where is Amelia?” Henry demanded.

“By the chickens.”

He said, “It’s a wonder she is doing any good around here. It’s a great wonder she ain’t set down to weep over that no-good of hers.”

Mrs. Niede turned, slowly, to face him. She had the hard, somber boniness of feature which she had transmitted to her daughter, and twenty years before she had been almost as pretty.