She said that she would go in, that it was dark now, and she arose from her chair quickly. ‘I aim to do like I promised myself,’ he said, ‘and no harm done and ne’er a thing betokened,’ and standing in the moonlight she let him place his arm about her and kiss her many times. Then she went within the door although he called her to come back, and later she heard his step going the south way, beating unevenly on the road, passing on, pausing, returning and then going. She sat on the side of her cot, her mind pursuing some word that was unnamed and could not gather itself into form, the hands of her mind reaching and straining to shape the nebula. The steady flow of his talk still beat about her and warmed her body out of its loneliness. He was gone far on the road, past Wingate’s, past Stigall’s, on toward the place where he slept, and the uneven beat of his footfalls, stopping and going forward, melted into her own breathing when she lay to sleep, and into the picture of brightly sunlit field where the plough had lately rasped through the hard soil. Then a cry came from her lips and she was suddenly awake in the moonlight of the whitewashed room, raised to her elbow, hearing the word ring through the walls, hearing still the cry that had lifted her, even jerked her back into the moonlit night. The word of her outcry receded from her, going in waves of remembered sound, throbbing on her ears as she searched from wall to wall to find some real and present token of it. The word, ‘Jasper’, still throbbed in her own voice, still fitted itself into her throat, and beat at the stiff white walls.

Henry went to the field now, limping unevenly, but little able to work. Ellen stayed near him to help and often brought him water to drink when he was weary. He was bitter for the time he had lost and jealous for every plan that had passed from his hands, speaking shortly to Nellie or to Ellen, but to Kent he gave only courtesy because his indebtedbness to him was great. The tobacco was laid by now for the cutting, a scant crop. ‘A fool he is, to try to grow a crop there,’ one or two said. Ellen still took the burden of the farm.