“Look out the window on a night when the moon is bright and find out,” I said.

“Do you keep it locked to keep out the deer?” asked Zebediah.

“No,” I said.

“The bears, then?” asked Wilfred.

We were all looking now.

“No.”

“Well, then what?” asked Zebediah.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s Old Tom who locks it.”

I did know because Old Tom had once told me. But I didn’t care to repeat it because it just sounded crazy.

THE MADDENS SETTLE IN

Well, that first night started fine. I took them on a little tour, showing them the chicken coop and the bull pen and the cows. Then I took them to see the plow horses and I turned to Zebediah to impress upon him that he was never to get into the bull pen or in with the horses. The horses, Tag and Molly, were very sweet but very large, and accidents do happen. The bull was just mean. But when I turned, Zebediah was gone, and it took some hunting to find him climbing up the fence that surrounded the night garden and peering through.

“Did you hear what I said about the bull pen and the horses?” I asked.

“Why do you keep this fenced? There aren’t any animals in it,” said Zebediah.

“I told you I don’t know. For heaven’s sake, leave it alone. There’s two hundred and seventy acres to explore; why choose the one thing that’s locked up to obsess over?” But, of course, I knew that it was the fact that it was the one locked thing that drew him.

“Do you take care of the animals at all?” asked Winifred.

“Yes. That is, I help. Old Tom mostly takes care of the animals, and Sina does the milking. I help gather the eggs and candle them, and I help take them and the milk to Brookman’s with Sina.”

“Who’s that?” asked Wilfred, pointing to a hunched-over figure going across one of the fields and crossing the road the military had put in that cuts through the forest to the coastal points where they had installed the big guns. I think the guns were stationed strategically to shoot at passing submarines or something, although, of course, we’d never seen a submarine. Still, it was a well-known fact that the waters around Vancouver Island were lousy with them: probably not Hitler’s submarines—they were too far away—although who knew? But Russian submarines, Japanese submarines, and American submarines. I didn’t know what they did, they just seemed to circle the island, but then there was so much about the war that they didn’t tell us.

“That’s the hermit,” I said. “Sina and Old Tom let him build a cabin in the forest on our property a little way down the coast. He’s probably going to the creamery to get the box of groceries Old Tom leaves for him once a week.”

“You’ve a lot of people using your land who don’t really belong here, don’t you?” asked Winifred.