Ahead of him, beyond the low stone wall, a round grove of rock-oak saplings pushed themselves together. For all their slenderness, you knew that they had been there a long time, wrapping their roots around the bony hill and straining for the sap of their tough nourishment. Arbutus grew there; once the boys and girls of Dan’s school had gone Maying, suckled in that legend by an elderly teacher who was an Englishman. They had whooped and tumbled among the bowlders, those boys, while the girls had fallen to their flower-plucking like honest little peasants. The arbutus trailed pink skeins over the stones; the tiny corollas were lined with rose. And all this had happened in some other century, when butterflies had richer cream on their wings, and schoolmasters in shabby beaver hats were very kind …

He spread his hands on the rim of stones and stepped over the wall. The bunching copse had hidden something which he could see now: the Fanning rig with Demon asleep in his seat and the mares idly swishing their tails at hungry flies. The bars by the Taneytown road were let down, and creasing wheel tracks curved from gate to grove.

The horses twisted their necks and sniffed in his direction, and where was the woman in black, and where was Tyler Fanning? Bale circled the northern edge of the copse; a mound of bright color lay in his path; Ty was flat and senseless upon a folded tartan blanket, the military hat covering his face. He had a cigar in his outflung hand, but the chewed butt of it was sliding through his limp fingers. No sword or belt or gloves or military blouse: just the wrinkled white shirt and blue breeches and the long, glistening boots dumped out across the blanket.

Dan heard a little sound; he turned. Mrs. Fanning was sitting some distance away, leaning her shoulders against the wall which bounded the north side of that pasture … He heard his feet, sounding enormous and clumsy in their march toward her. As he approached, he saw her mouth bend in a smile—not the polite smirk of one who brought roses to a dead old man, but a flutter which moved with her eyes and made something tender and secret of her whole face.

She explained, “We’ve been for a drive through the countryside. This seemed like a place where it would be nice to stop; I’ve never been here before.”

“I thought you must be having a picnic.”

“No, we’ve nothing to eat … Tyler didn’t wish to stop, but I insisted. Maybe he’ll feel better, now that he’s slept some more.”

He asked, “May I sit down?”