She studies him. He despises the very family he will die to protect. A tattered flag on a grey morning, abject, glorious, inutile and perverse.

All right, she says. All right, dang you.

She stands, and he covers his face with his hands.

Thank you, he says. Thank you, thank you. Keep your secrets, Sarah Mary Williams. You are owed.

Shes almost out of the room when he stops her.

Wait, he says and points to the gun on the end table. Dont forget this.

Never mind that, she says. I aint aimin to wake up the whole goddarn house.

In the basement she pulls up a stool and sits at the cage door and exchanges a long gaze with Randolph Grierson, who sits slumped against the wall and lacks the energy to pull himself up. His eyes have all the red-rimmed sunkenness of an ancient animal.

I dont know, Mr Grierson, she says. I gotta say it dont feel exactly right.

The fingers of his hand grasp weakly at the air, and for a moment he reminds her of another slow-moving, dream-witted man she is fond of.

It dont seem right, she continues, the destruction of what a family loves or even what a family hates, for that matter. A households got its own spooks, and it aint for strangers to come bullying in to exorcize them.

She puts her fingers through the chicken wire, and he struggles to move a little in her direction.

Yeah, I know, she says. You dont care one way or the other, do you? All you want is a little chum in your belly. I guess youre lucky like that. You got a whole household cant let go of you one generation on either side that cant bear either to look at you or forget you. Thats a lot of passion you got stirred up around here, Mr Grierson. And youre off beyond the pursuit of its meaning. I reckon theres a kind of freedom to it.

She leans forward now, her elbows on her knees.

Beyond the pursuit of meaning and beyond good and evil too, she says. See, its a daily chore tryin to do the right thing. Not because the right thing is hard to do it aint. Its just cause the right thing well, the right things got a way of eluding you. You give me a compass that tells good from bad, and boy Ill be a soldier of the righteous truth. But them two things are a slippery business, and tellin them apart might as well be a blind mans guess.

She stands and undoes the latch on the cage and swings the door open. She advances two steps in, stands over the slow, grasping figure of Mr Grierson and unsheathes the gurkha knife.