Mr Al called the hounds in from the fields and fed them sparingly of coarse bread, keeping them lean for hunting. Sometimes he and MacMurtrie would ride away at sundown with twenty hounds around their horses’ feet, but now the dogs were fastened in a room off the barn. Mr Al was gone away somewhere now, gone to buy stock. He would come back with a great brown Jersey bull and a new cow or two. They would have blue ribbons on their horns.

‘A nice fine fellow said it, I swear ’fore God he did. He says “Who’s that-there fine looker?”’

The cows waiting about the gates spoke to each other with low mutterings, rumbling into deep notes that sank off into mere vibrations and shook coarsely on the air. The thought of Mr Dick lay formless in Ellen’s mind, gathering back of all the pictures of the farm, a remote voice accompanying quiet unseeing eyes. He rode away somewhere almost every day at sundown; his shining brown horse made little steps on the gravel of the drive, but he was always back among the mules in the morning. The mules crunched their fodder all day and all night, trotting down to the watering place to drink, rolling back to the high tables down which someone often went with more food. The grinding of the great jaw could be heard halfway down the pasture. Sitting on the bench outside Ellen could feel them crowd at the feedings and make the barn tremble – fifty or sixty great animals tearing at corn. In a few days the mules would be fat for the market, and then Mr Dick would go away with them, and she thought faintly of the many things he must know in his quietness, of his going away at sundown.

‘And he says “Who’s that-there good-looker you see over in Wakefield’s place?”’ Ben was droning on.

She stared down at the dry ground where the surface was broken in uneven cracks. The ants were gone; they were never seen running in and out of the soil. The little wisps of fodder that lay about changed places now and then in the sudden breeze that swept the lot floor. She was pushing grains of corn off the cob with her thumbs, two or three grains at a time, feeling the spring of the grain react to her wrist, feeling the grains yield and fall. The autumn cries of the peacocks came, wild screams from across two hills. She had found a shed peacock feather in the pasture, blue and gold and green, bold design lying in the frail mesh of feather. All day she had worn it in the bosom of her dress and at night she had pinned it on the wall of the room below stairs over the fireplace. Nellie had looked at it wonderingly, turning it over and over. Blue and black and green and gold and peacock blue, brass and pale purple… Suddenly it seemed that there was a baby in her hands, a little baby in the crook of her arm. Her baby, it was, and a great wave of power went over her. She was strong at once with a great strength. A wave of tenderness ran up her face and sank deeply into her eyes that closed to hold it. Her back felt its power to curve protectingly over a defenceless little thing and her breast reached out to it. Her shoulders were large and strong and her breast was deep… It was nothing. It was gone and forgotten in the moment of going, and there was the ear of corn in her hands. A jointed voice was mumbling words close at hand, ‘The time of they lives if they only knowed so.’