There was a spring boxed about with timbers across the road from the toll house door. Here Ellen dipped out the water for the house and here a traveller would sometimes stop for a drink. One day in April while Ellen hoed in the garden near the fence Bell Carrier, the woman who walked with the eggs each day to McGill, stopped. She carried the tin cup in her hand, and she waited beside the fence for a short while, looking knowingly from her vessel to Ellen.

While the questions were being asked and answered a man came down the road from the hill. His feet were bare and his shoes, which were tied together, were hung over his shoulder. When he came opposite Bell he stopped and spoke to her with a slight bow.

‘I’d like to borrow the loan of your cup to get me a cup of water from that-there well, ma’am.’

‘You’re right welcome,’ Bell said. She took the two eggs out of the cup and laid them carefully on the grass. The man reached for the cup eagerly and held it under the tiny stream that trickled from the rocks at the side of the road. When he had drunk he wiped his mouth on his cuff and looked about him.

‘It’s a right warm day for spring,’ he said.

‘Hit is a warm day and that I know,’ Bell replied.

‘I got a long piece to go against sundown,’ he said further, ‘but if night finds me on the road I’ll stay at Colin Carico’s. Colin will make me welcome at his table and give me a bed, or maybe Pius Edelen will or Terry Yocum. I’m on my way to a place a far piece off from here. Colin is a person of a kind turn now. He’ll give me a bed maybe.’

Ellen tapped the clods lightly with her hoe to hear the talk more easily, working toward the fence.

‘You seem acquainted in these parts right well,’ Bell said. She had put the eggs back into her cup. ‘You seem acquainted like.’

‘I go this road once or twice a year and have now for near ten years. I’m on the lookout for a little piece of work that won’t hold me fast, you know. I got to visit my brother over on the Ridge for a spell. I thought I’d make it out to be over there when cherries is ripe. Then I’ll go over to Green and stay a piece with my other brother. I got two brothers. He’ll be mighty proud to see me come walken up to his door some day. I like to make a point to be down there in peach time. Do you know anybody got a little piece of work to do?’

Bell looked at Ellen with bewildered eyes and Ellen answered.

‘Squire Stigall wants somebody enduren the set-out season, I heared Pappy say. He wants a hand the worse kind to help set out and plough.’