She arose from the loom and slipped away from the house, walking down the shaded river road quickly, her mind set upon reaching the place before noon. An old man in a wagon gave her a ride for three miles or more, and then she asked him to let her down, for she wanted to come to Barnet’s place in her own way. The road lifted up from the river and ran along a low ridge where the stones were hot in the open sun, and many turnings were passed, the road running mile after mile, further than she had known. ‘Whose land is this-here?’ she would ask a passing woman or a child, but none ever said ‘Barnet’s’. ‘Is it a far piece to Barnet’s?’ she would ask again, and the answers would vary, ‘Nigh three mile, I’d judge,’ or ‘Every lick of four mile yet, I calculate,’ or sometimes one would say, ‘Just a little piece on, around a couple of turns and down a hill.’ ‘Is there a boy named Jonas Prather that works at Barnet’s place?’ she asked, and the answer, ‘There is for a fact. I see him in the patch as I passed along, field back from the road behind a hay field. This very day it was, I believe, I see Prather.’ But later when she asked how far the answer came, ‘A right smart distance yet, better’n three mile, but there’s a shortcut across by the dirt road. You go on a mile, say, and then off to the right and it’s no piece at all.’ She passed road-menders who were hauling crushed stone and forking it into place along the pike. They looked at her from over their shovels and forks as she passed but she asked them no questions. When they were out of sight she followed the road as it curved down into a cool thicket and there she bathed her face and hands in a little runlet that trickled over green moss, for she must be cool and sweet; the way was not far now to go. Beyond the shade of the thicket the dirt road appeared, and, following it, she wound down a hill into a stony flat where a great waste of washed-out land lay, white and brittle and salty in the hot sun of the mid-afternoon. A small house sat near the roadside, and as she approached it an old woman who was barefoot came to the door and looked stiffly out. Her grizzled hair hung in a short braid over her shoulder and her red swollen feet stood squarely below her dingy dress. When Ellen came opposite the door she stopped in the road and spoke, saying timidly, ‘Good evening, ma’am.’

‘Good evening,’ the woman said, and the tone of the greeting added, ‘And what do you want now?’ to her words.

‘Would this road take a body to Barnet’s place?’

‘It would and again it wouldn’t. What you want at Barnet’s?’

‘I want to see a party on Barnet’s.’