Two young men came one morning in late autumn to help Ben drive the turkeys away to town. The air was full of frost. Ellen threw the turkeys great handfuls of corn and their feathers made a low thunder as they swept down upon it. The flocks still kept together in general, five groups flowing in and out of one another. One of the men beat his hands together in the November cold and called out, ‘Let ’em come on. They’ll drive just like hogs against they get out on the pike.’ Ellen stood back with Miss Tod and watched the fowls go, five groups to the last, never entirely lost, the pattern of the flock still printed upon them, the mark of the nest. Her bonnet blew down into her eyes and the cold of the morning stung her throat. The flocks went down the front pasture following Ben who dropped corn before them, flowing in and out and creeping forward over the ground, their ways of keeping together went, the little hurt one, now grown large and strong, all went. Ellen bent her bonnet down over her face and brushed off tears. Why, she wondered, should she be liking a flock of anything, flocks, things nobody ever could have forever? She turned away from the fence slowly and walked back through the lot where a few fowls stood about. ‘You can have one of them that’s left,’ Miss Tod said.

After the turkeys were gone Ellen was asked to help with the milking at the barn while Josie was kept in the house. Often she went to the tobacco barn to help Henry strip the tobacco where they worked in a little room which was heated on cold days by a small stove. The dust of the tobacco would hang in the air and make long beams before the small window. Henry would stoop over his task, muttering from time to time, telling himself things he had long known, working very slowly. One day a girl and a child came passing through the farm by the road which led over the hill toward the river. Ellen heard strange voices outside and her breath leaped with joy. Some hand opened the door of the stripping room and a girl pushed a crying child before her saying:

‘Could we come in and warm? This-here chap is a-cryen.’