The old man sighed, a little puzzled, and groaned down into his chair again. Dan walked past the smoke-house and wagon shed; Henry Niede stood in the deep shadow of the upper barn door, watching him come. Bale nodded at him. “Good-day, Mr. Niede. I stopped by for a drink.”

Niede’s face wrinkled in a crafty, narrow-eyed smile. “Why, howdy-do, Dan Bale! I didn’t know was you, now. I thought was some other feller. Well.” He came forward, dusty-armed, his boots shuffling in loose strands of hay that were spilled about the sill. “Well, and your grandfather was buried today. Ach, that is too bad for the old man.”

“He was sick a long time.”

“I guess you’re just about the only heir, ain’t it?” The man seemed fighting to keep a honeyed eagerness out of his voice.

“Yes,” Bale said. “It’s likely there won’t be any more, either. I seem to be cut out for a bachelor. Good-day, sir.” He lifted his hand and went on, past the barn. He could feel Niede’s eyes squinting, burning after him with an unholy avarice. He thought, “They’re all alike. Money. Money. Doc was right. It’s money which has caused war and the major unhappinesses. He’d sell that girl for a body slave if he could get his price—Niede would. Not that I want her…”

The farmer had driven his vision from him; he was insensitive now to the droning tranquillity. You could put people down in any violet meadow, in any hillock of clover, and see their petty defilement before an hour had passed. Defilement: himself, along with the others. Without hesitancy he had hoped to plant sensual germs within the head of his neighbor’s wife, and had imagined that they grew out to enfold him and draw him into the mutual festering of their desires … He vaulted over the fence and went back toward Granite Ridge, swinging across a field east of the Codori farm. The froth of daisies rippled and tossed as he crumpled it.

At Codoris’, someone was sharpening a scythe. The juicy weet, weet of a cold whetstone keened against the solid blade: there were weeds to cut, grass to mow, the forests of the grasshoppers must be shaved down.