Sometimes between dances the young people would walk away along the road in the moonlight or stop under the dark trees to hear the hunters and the hounds off among the hill fields. The women sat by the smouldering fire, indulgent, too heavy in body and mind for dancing but glad enough for the girls to have their day. Old Dan O’Shay told a long story that droned endlessly among the men as they sat beside their fire. When the young people had wandered away to the lane or to one of the fires, Mr Townley would presently call them back with his sudden strumming. Dorine danced with Elmer and Rosie with Eli, Maggie with Erastus or Sebe, Ellen with Erastus or Sebe. The moon was a small white disc in the sky accompanied by an incredibly vast light, widely spread. As she danced Ellen’s thought went widely with the moonlight, but deeply underneath in the roots of sense it drew toward the secret shadows. Jonas would pair the couples for the sets, giving Ellen to Sebe or to some of the O’Shays, but never taking her himself. The sky was clear like glass and their faces were clear, clearly discerned, each one telling its like with the candour of the moonlight. Dorine was quick and slender, her back daintily curved in the dance, and Ellen put flowers in her hair and hung her own chain about her neck, a chain Maggie had made by threading bright red haws, wanting to reward Dorine and endow her grace and her quick laughter. Then Jonas kissed Maggie and gave her to Erastus for a partner and went to sit among the men while the dance went forward. Some of the older men joined the revel. They would stare at the girls and then contend with the young men for places, dancing languidly as if but to fulfil the obligation or the dance pattern, as if they held the dance but lightly beside the matters of their days, the hogs and their slop, the tobacco and the corn. Jonas would continue to pair the couples for the sets or he would stand beside Mr Townley and call the forms or sit beside the elder O’Shay, smoking quietly.

Then Ellen left the dance and went to sit among the women about the dying fire, but she came upon them from the shadowed side and they were unaware of her. One or two smoked quiet pipes and others chewed dip sticks. Their voices arose out of their meditations, arising aimlessly, gathering into a saying or falling away into drowsy quiet. A hard voice from a thin withered throat:

‘If the girls only knowed what they wanted, they’d take the fellow that could make, that had property.’

Another voice, high pitched: ‘And easy-goen, not stingy.’

‘When I was a gal they was six horses tied to Pappy’s fence of a Sunday. But I set my head on Joe and looked like I never see any the rest.’