The house among the cedar trees stood empty and presently the shutters were falling, making of it a fearful place to see, the great blank windows staring. Someone took MacMurtrie’s hounds away and the cows went somehow from the pasture. Ellen never heard again the high eerie cry, pee-o-wee-wee, going out over the marsh or over the sheep pasture. The absence of the cry came over her mind as a power holding the land and touching herself, and when she climbed Wakefield’s wooded hill or stole a little way into the thicket lying around the marsh her ears were half-alert for it although she had a deep knowledge that it would never come. With the thought of the cry or of the stilled cry there would be the thought of Jonas, or if she stooped over a bank his hand reached with her hand to gather violets. His hand reached with her hand when she dropped the beans in their rows or when she placed chosen eggs under a brooding hen. His fingers curved with her fingers and his foot set itself in the path with her foot. In the early morning, going up to the tobacco field, looking up into the blue of the sky that was finely granulated and delicately moted with dissolving cycles flowing outward and forming forever under her gaze, something to breathe and to have, plovers in it, his gaze went up with her gaze and his happiness parted her lips while his hand on her back steadied her shoulders.

Eli and Rosie were married and went away to another country to live, and Ellen saw no more of Rosie, for the way was long and hard to go and Eli could spare no time for journeys. When Jonas had been gone two weeks or more he wrote Ellen a letter which she read many times, following each phrase to its last degree of meaning and searching out each connoted thought. The letter: ‘Friend Ellen, I came up here and I am working for old Mr Bee Cornish. He got his arm ripped wide open in a sawmill. Last week I ploughed for corn and this I am planting. I hope it holds off raining until I get done. Then the patch is to set out, about three acres in all, not much tobacco. Dear, dear Elleen. I think of you every day. I will kiss the letters of your name. Mr Cornish is a fine man and the pay is good. I hope the weather stays pretty until after next week. Then let it rain. I will be back sometime. Goodbye dear Elleen.’ It was signed ‘Jonas W. Prather’.

Ellen wrote a reply in which she told of the newly worked highway and of the opened road through MacMurtrie’s land, of the geese Miss Tod was growing, silly things always thinking someone was about to pester them. The dogwood tree was a fair sight to see this time, she said, and she told of Rosie’s wedding. When he came back the cherries would be ripe and she would bake him a pie. She wanted to tell him something more, but pore over the words as she would and empty her mind of its phrases, she could not find the adequate sayings. On the paper words seemed hard and dumb, or given freedom they were sugared and easy and light. She tore these away and began anew, leaving in the news of the farm and of the dogwood, of Rosie, and the promise of the cherries. In the end she wrote that when he came she would have much to tell, trusting that she would then find a way.