In December Henry said that he would go to a farm behind the St Lucy country, to the southeast. It was a damp morning, the air mild and wet, the horizon standing close, when they were preparing to leave. Ellen was to start her cow on the way and then come back to help pack the things into the wagon, leaving the cow grazing along the road. She found the heifer unwilling to leave the herd, loath to pass through the gate and quit the pasture she had always known. Ellen could lay her hand on the animal’s neck and lead her forward a short distance, but she would stand uncertain, gazing about at the road in bewilderment, and turn back toward the farm gate. Ellen was so occupied with getting the cow forward that she passed the farm with no thought of farewell and no sense of this as the last passing. There was no looking backward at the cabin, at the barns or pens, at the pond, and no pang at seeing acutely the pasture brow where she had last seen Jonas, and the paths and roads along which she had walked often with him in her mind. The little cow was a year and nine months old, delicately formed as yet, a mere heifer, but her calf would come before the summer. She had never known life except the life of the herd, she drifting across the pasture with the other cows, feeding on the pasture grass or on the fodder at the ricks, surrounded by the comfort of companions. Ellen passed beyond the reach of Wakefield’s land and beyond Gowan’s stone wall, intent upon the heifer. She thought that she would put the animal inside some small enclosure, some pasture she might pass, and go back for a rope to make a lending line, but before a convenient place appeared the wagon came, Henry driving and Nellie beside him on the seat, with all the furniture piled on the wagon frame and a coop holding the hens and geese tied on behind.

‘I allowed to go back and help,’ Ellen said, surprised at the appearance, but the cow had given more trouble than they had expected and Henry had no word of blame for her. She had been cut free by the accident, and now, her attention upon the beast as before, she followed the slowly moving wagon and fell far behind it although it moved as a lodestar ahead of her, the shifting goal toward which she centred, for her thought could not go beyond it. She knew nothing of their destination, having been too listless to ask. ‘Over behind St Lucy,’ Henry had said. The place was as remote to her as some uncharted land beyond unmeasured floes and lying out white on a map. Mile after mile she followed the slim heifer or led her gently along, letting her eat the dry winter grass by the road and drink as she pleased at any stream. The farms receded and strange roadsides closed about her, and she no longer knew the lay of the hills and meadows. There were herself and the cow, passing forward toward a moving destiny, the wagon, all moving down the turning roads and crossing lanes, going by some genius forward and on. She would watch the rise and fall of the cow’s hips and the sway of her back, the slow undulations of her horns, until she was herself identified with the drifting beast. The heifer was a pale brown with darker shadings about her feet and darker clouds of brown lying over her face. She had no knowledge of the calf that was in her side. After the many turnings she had made no further resistance, but went slowly rising and falling, drifting along the roads, taking guidance from Ellen’s hand on her hip.