Back in the farm there was a stone pit and an old quarry where the walls curved around in an irregular bow and rose to the top of the hill which had been sliced asunder. At the bottom of the wall a pool of water lay, a clear pool with a grey wall and a reach of sky reflected in it. Above the wall a stony pasture went toward the north and broke into crumbling bluffs at the northwest, but below the wall the land rolled down into a sloping field that rounded off to the ends of its confines and melted into the lifting fields of the next farm. Ellen’s cow grazed in the high pasture; she would come slowly down the path beside the quarry each evening walking unevenly on the zigzag way. From the high pasture Ellen could see the Wingate house where the nearest neighbour lived. The rear walls, dull and weathered, stood distantly above the angles of two hills, the stone chimney with its frayed top leaning against a gable end. In one of the dark lower rooms old Mrs Wingate sat all day tearing rags into strips and winding the strings into balls, rocking to and fro as she worked and muttering, ‘He’s got to pay me for my skirt I ruined, nohow… Meat and lard and flour… I lay he held back part. You know calves is a-sellen dear now.’ Ellen had heard the mutterings one day while she waited for someone to answer her rap, but no one came. Inside the opened window an old voice muttered and the dusty odour of rags floated out when the tearing sound came. Another day Ellen had knocked at the door, wanting to know if the woman had three hens she would sell. The mutterings were flowing faster and a mocking old voice was simpering, ‘Better sell the mule colts, better sell… as if I don’t know when to sell my own property… I lay a dollar I’m robbed every day I live, robbed by my own hired help… I ought to charge up for the sweet he wastes. I’ll say “fifty dollars for the victuals you wasted, a-leaven drips on your plate, Jasper Kent,” I’ll say.’ Ellen had come away without making her knocking heard. When she saw the frayed chimney and the weathered roof from the top of the pasture she always thought of the mutterings at the window and the smell of dusty rags. The man, Kent, farmed Mrs Wingate’s land, the two sharing all profits equally. Ellen had seen him go along the road, walking or riding, a tall man, bent a little with his own height as if he stooped to meet the earth, or again she had seen him flinging down the fields – looking at him with her quick glance, as she looked at Pius Donahue or Kate Bannan’s boy. Sitting in the dim room, admitted at last on the mission of hens, she had heard the voice of the mutterings now honeyed with praise. ‘There never was an honester man. “Better sell the mules,” he says only today. I tell you he watches the market close, Jasper Kent does. He’s a hearty eater but he don’t waste, and I love to see a man eat hearty.’ When she had passed out at the door Ellen stayed a moment to hear the mutterings renewed, listening fearfully to her own voice as it was mocked inside the window. ‘Any hens to sell! As if I had a chicken farm. Any hens. “Could you let Mammy have three hens?” I didn’t ask but a quarter apiece. Well, if she comes again she’ll find hens is advanced. Stick-out nose and flat belly, a slut, I’ll lay a dollar on it. “Any hens!” I never could fancy a wall-eyed wench.’ From the summit of the pasture the house would seem turned back upon itself to mutter and whine, the leaning chimney adhering to the end wall. ‘Any hens! A wall-eyed slut! I never could fancy.’ Regina had said that Mrs Wingate was in a lasting quarrel with her son, Albert, because old Wingate when he died left all the property to his wife during her life, and because Albert tried to force his mother to give him a part. He was a great hearty man who stayed in the town roistering and working in turns, or he would come to the farm blustering. The bare old house stood blankly out of the hills and the trees, crouching under its debased chimney, and Ellen walked over the hill pasture looking for her heifer. The spring cold was clear in the sky.