‘I’m old. I’m so old I’m about done with liven. I can feel how old I am. I’m old and old and old. I’ve been in life a long, long time. Oh, how old I am.’

A sob stood, a bar, before her flowing mind. She was pushed and shoved up against the barrier. She let her body fall to the bed and lay curled there, too sad to make further preparations to sleep. On and on, without end, she felt herself and all other things going, day and night and day and rain and windy weather, and sun and then rain again, wanting things and then having things and then wanting. Eating and then wanting to eat again, and never any end, and it goes on and on. On and on. And then you’re old. And what did you ever have that was enough? And what was it for anyway? You could never see any end to anything and it goes on and on. Night comes and then it gets to be day, and sheep cry and then they’re still and then they cry again. Voices beat on her memory but they made hollow meaningless noises. Something that came to nothing went on and on. ‘Open the gate, Ellen!’ It was nothing but sound running up and down. What for? What for? On and on. Thus until sleep, the comforter spoke, running gentle hands down her tired nerves and sad thought. ‘It’s no knowen how lovely I am. I’m a-liven. My heart beats on and on and my skin laps around me and my blood runs up and it runs down, shut in me. It’s unknowen how lovely.’

One evening in August one of the turkey hens failed to bring her brood back to the pasture, and Ellen searched the near-lying fields all through the dusk crying ‘pee, pee, pee,’ and looking into the fence corners. She thought the hen would be sitting with her chickens huddled about her. ‘Some varment will get you-all for certain if you stay out all night,’ she whispered over and over.

The next morning the hen had not come and Ellen went off across the fields as soon as she had milked the cow and cut the wood for the dinner fire. She looked anxiously through the oat stubble and down the tobacco rows. Beyond the tobacco field lay a stretch of lightly wooded hillside sloping down toward the north, and when this had been searched she came to strange fences and other fields belonging to neighbouring farms. She retraced her way to the tobacco field again, climbing on fences to peer out over the land, but later she went down the wooded hill again, drawn by the strange vistas seen through the trees, framed by the trees, and climbed a stone wall which ran up one side of a cut grain field. It was a clear day with blue sky and wind and a hot sun shining. The wind and the sun were one. The sun flowed in waves over her and throbbed in the mesh of her cotton dress. The sun quivered in waves over the stubble and over the moist pasture. She walked through crab grass and timothy and wild barley, the way leading down a creek toward the north, a little creek that lay against the side of the hill and was crossed at each fencerow by a water gap. She broke a long withe and with this she switched at her ankles as she walked quickly down the creekside. The angles of the hills turned in strange ways and the white stones of a strange creek lay wide in the sun. She began to sing a song she had heard Ben mumbling.