He went out walking very early. It was barely light. From the kitchen she heard his boots on the stairs and a single joyous bark from the dog. By the time she had put on a cap and slippers and reached the hall he was already out on the drive. Through the narrow window beside the door she saw the dog dancing around him as he tightened his scarf and settled the brim of his hat. He had a stick with him, one of the ten or twelve that leaned against the panels in a corner of the hall, blackthorns and ash. She tapped on the glass—she would give him some breakfast to take with him—but though the dog heard her the man did not and walked out of her sight towards the gate at the side of the house that would lead him through the garden and then to the fields.

He had been gone more than two hours when Tom arrived, snow on his shoulders. He had spent the night with the hens waiting for a fox that did not come. She heated cider for him and gave him the last of the pheasant pie. She told him about the man, his setting off without a bite in his pockets, his first time out of the house. And now snow!

“But what can befall him?” said Tom. She made a face and he said it again. “What can befall him, Nell? He knows his way.”

He drank his cider, ate the pie. It was good to see him take such pleasure in the things she gave. He was her friend, unmarried, more or less her own age. There was a time—a season—a few years back, when they might have made more of each other but the moment had passed. Or perhaps it had not, not quite. She liked to think a sensible woman became more valuable with the passage of time. And she felt strong.

“What is he going to do with himself now he’s here?” asked Tom.

“He must make his life again,” she said. It was a phrase that had come to her the previous night or the night before. Those moments when words seep out of silence. “There’s the house. The land . . . ”

“What’s left of it,” said Tom. He had made his views plain to her before on the matter of selling land to buy a commission and pay mess bills.

“He might find a wife,” she said.

“A wife?”

“Why not? He is not old.”

“There’s Widow Simpson,” said Tom.

“She’s near sixty!”

“There’s Widow Coombes.”

“It does not have to be a widow, Tom.”

He nodded. On a forefinger he collected the crumbs from the pie. The snow was heavier but fell unhurried, brushing the kitchen window, settling on the tops of the stone pillars, on the boughs of the ash trees across the lane.

“Has he said any more about the battle?”

“What battle?” she asked.