He went back into the hall. He said to the little old woman, “Well. I’m going up to bed. What time is the funeral?”

“For two o’clock tomorrow.”

“All right.” Those were the only words which he found it easy to say to this tired, shrunken toiler in calico. “Thank you for everything, Mrs. Wurke.”

She began to cry. “I was pretty fond of Mr. Bale. He was pretty good to me, these three years.”

“I’ll want you to stay and keep house for me, awhile.”

She made bubbling, soapy little chirps and swallows. “Yes. Yes … I … be glad to stay by you.”

The second story of the house was bisected by a straight hall with a window at the rear and a door leading to the upper gallery in front. At the head of the stairs. Dan stopped and looked out of the rear window—southwest, through darkness which hid a scurf of young oak trees and a sloping pasture. The Fanning house stood beyond. A lot of lamps were burning, over there. He wondered what sort of a person Tyler had married … remembered the time when he and Tyler Fanning had a battle out in that field, flinging dry white weeds at each other, pretending that the weeds were spears. He wounded Ty. In the neck. The broken shaft of a sharp reed scraped the white varnish from his skin. “Oh God,” screamed Ty, “oh God oh God oh God oh God.”

Dan walked on through the smelly thickness of the hallway. His own room was at the front, on the northwest side. The door never had closed tightly—now it was just as sagging, just as cramped and crooked as it had been seven years before. He brought out a box of sulphur matches; the thick head of his match popped like a torpedo when he scratched it. There was a lamp with a tin reflector, in a bracket on the wall. The room began to grow slowly all about him—that same room, coming to uneven and shadowy life once more. He screwed down the ragged orange flame and replaced the lamp chimney.

Mrs. Wurke had been sewing in there; she had left unhemmed aprons and a mass of yellow tissue patterns on the bed. Dan removed the pile and put it upon a chair. He sat down on the bed, thudding his leather bag at his feet … sat down heavily amid high-piled feather mattresses—the cords sagged under him and the big maple frame made squeaks and clickings.