But he came one afternoon in the midst of the week, Thursday, and sat with her on the cabin porch while his plough was being mended at the shop. One of the plough horses was tied to the gate post for more than an hour while he sat in the falling cold.

‘That-there feisty bay mare jumped straight upwards and broke the tongue outen the plough. But Sandy says he can fix it against work time tomorrow. That-there bay fixed it so I wouldn’t have to work after two o’clock today. She fixed me a holiday when she jumped. I’ve been a no-account cuss, nohow. You don’t know, Elleen, how triflen I been,’ he said, ‘in my time. Throwen my wages here and yon. I could ’a’ owned a small-sized farm if I had ’a’ saved up. I’m satisfied I could. Not had the sense of a pecker-wood.’

‘Yes, I reckon you been right o’nary,’ she mocked at him.

‘I want to tell you all about me.’ She saw him glance at her sidewise, uneasily. ‘I ain’t never told you about Jule Nestor.’

‘You don’t need to tell me if it’s a trouble to you.’

‘I ain’t never told you about Jule Nestor. Down on the river away on past the reach. Wife of a man named Bill Nestor. Lived with some people named Jones, dirty trash, stinken house. I ain’t never told you about Jule.’

‘It likely ain’t anything harmful.’

‘I used to go there last winter,’ he said.

‘Was it so wrong to go there, Jonas?’

‘I been a sinful man, Elleen, low-down. My own mammy would cry if she knowed.’

His elbows were on his knees, his face in his hands now. Irregular tremors passed over his limbs and shook unevenly at his fingers that beat upon his temples. She turned away from him and looked off toward the barns and the west hills, unprepared for grief, looking over the barns toward the sky and the spreading haze, wondering why he was so distraught that he could scarcely speak. His trouble followed her, however, coming out of his shaking voice, the words low-spoken and tight as if they were set into his throat with a hard will.

‘I used to go there last winter and winter afore last, away in the night, knocken on the door. The Jones old woman, she’d say, “Jule’s up the steps. You can go up for yourself.”’

She was still looking toward the barns and the cattle pens, but pain had gathered within her, gathered from his pain. The fact that he valued what he told highly as an evil and shuddered from the telling, and that he felt that it concerned her and that she must know, this troubled and pleased her in one confused pang. He was quiet for a while, but when he spoke his voice crumbled away, insufficient, falling to a hard whisper.

‘I reckon you don’t know what Jule was, what kind she was.’

Her pain had spread over her now, knocking at her breast and drawing at her throat. Her eyes left the sky and turned to the ground, to the withered grass of the yard and the hard earth of the path.