‘She’s my mammy, mine,’ she whispered. How could she ever live without her mother? Suppose. The yard without Nellie, the cabin without, supper without. A great terror went over her, followed by renewed tenderness. She could hardly walk past the cabin door, so great was her emotion. She went past her mother very gently and walked up the steps on light bare feet. The wood fell softly from her arms to the hearthstone making scarcely a whisper and settled down upon itself mutely under her hushing hands.

Ellen lay in her bed up in the loft in the cool of a late September evening, two old quilts pulled over her. Brown shocks of corn were dotted about in her mind pictures, and between the dun splotches of the corn there were large yellow pumpkins lying, naked, the vines withered down by the frost. From the cabin door she could see the hill where the tents stood up against the sky, the tents of the corn, and her thought sat down in the doorway to hear the blackbirds chattering and to see the ploughed field of the summer, the tobacco field now ploughed again for rye. Great hawks made wide shadows soar among the clods. Little turnips came into her mind, little pink things growing where the beans had been, crowding together. The corn blades were brown and hard. They would crumble and break if she bent them in her fingers. Jock would be going down the road toward Tennessee, taking his drove of horses down, going the old road. He might come through Rushfield next court day on his way down from the Bluegrass. He would be sure to come that way.

She sat up in bed, jerked from her back by the force of the thought. She stared out the open window into the hillside which was lit by a full moon.

‘He might be there, now, might, a-campen down some road.’

She would go there, walking in the night. By morning she would be in the town; eight miles would not be far to go in a long night. She would see Tessie once more. If only for a day or a half day, she would see Tessie. She would walk into town and ask over and over on the street, ‘Do you-all know whe’r there’s any gypsies a-campen down the roads or not? Any horse-swappers? Any movers?’ She would come straight out with the question. ‘Any travellers?’ Somebody would be sure to know. ‘I see a parcel of wagons out that-there road this very day.’ Then she would walk out to the place and there would be the wagons, the tongues pulled up against a fence. Tessie would be behind the best wagon cooking something on a little fire, or maybe she would be just at that moment starting to town with a little something to peddle under her arm.

Her father would whip her when she came walking back the next night. She could feel the switch on her back and the blows cut in with little sharp stabs of joy. Nellie’s voice: