Once more he took the burden, and he followed Irene across the pasture. She stayed a few yards ahead of him as if she had a peculiar creed against walking at his side. The Fanning house was a cavern of hot smells. “Not in there,” the girl ordered, when he turned toward the sitting room; “bring her up the back stairway.” He carried Mrs. Knouse up the dark, winding case and then he was in the second story of the big house, and it was the first time he had been there since he was a child.

“Where?”

“This is the spare room. Here, on your left. We offered what beds we had but Doctor Pell said No.” The bed was ancient and curtained; the curtains had a motif of little girls leading faded lambs. Irene drew the drapes apart, and Bale put Mrs. Knouse into the dim sanctuary of linen and goose-feathers. She said, Speckle-lilies, and there is my canary-bird in the cellar still. “I’ll get it,” Dan said, and he went out to the hall.

He stood looking into the dark pit of the rear stairs, and a few shafts of sunlight slanted past him. He heard Irene murmuring reassurance to the old woman, and promising tea and an egg; he heard her opening the window. She came out and closed the door.

“I’ll go for her bird,” he repeated. Downstairs, other men said other things: a damp and unhealthy chanting of many voices like sleepy children, and you could not make out their words. The girl stood beside him and her shoulders were drooping. He took her hand. She did not attempt to withdraw it, but her skin was all too cool. “Irene,” he said.

Her eyes came up and they showed hollow desperation which he had not seen there before. Some assurance seemed broken within her mind.

“I want to see you.”

“What?” he asked. And then, “Irene—oh, darling, I—”

“Oh,” she said, “don’t talk about it now.” She drew her hand away. Her lips were caked. “It’s about Tyler,” she explained. “That’s what it’s about. But I have things to do. I—have things— Will you come later?”

He said with a dreadful casualness and dignity: “Certainly,” and then went ahead of her down the staircase. There were too many people in the kitchen—Gretel and Demon and shirtless strangers—fresh blood, blood not so fresh. A hollow-chested youth with a stained cloth pinned across his front, was warming something in a pan on the stove. In the closed sitting room, two men competed in horrid vocal contest. One said Lucille, over and over, and the other kept talking about They’re only militia, Bobby, only militia—