She turned toward him a little and glanced at his face, and he began to speak again, quietly, approaching cautiously to some point he held in his mind, circling widely about his story as if to remove himself from it for a little space. Jule Nestor’s husband was Bill Nestor, a low-down tramp, gone awhile and then back, a sort of low gambler who worked with loaded dice and hung around the negroes on their pay days. You might see him any court day in town. He did not care what Jule did if she made a little money and gave him his share, even helped her. They were gone away now, over toward the knobs, had cleared out when the law was after Bill for some meanness. They were a dirty set, white-trash if ever there was any such on the earth. Jule was dirty, inside and out, worse inside, he thought. A dirty talker. But they were gone now, over toward the knobs, cleared out overnight one time during the summer. It was said Bill robbed a man on the road, held up a man travelling along the pike, an old man, feeble and sick. Bill handled him rough and hurt the old man and left him almost dead on the side of the road. Then the law got on Bill’s track and he cleared out overnight.

Jonas told his story sparingly, deferring its point. Eli had been over into the knobs beyond the river looking for work for next year, not that there would be any farm work in the knobs, but his errand to see a man took him there. He had run on the Nesters, had found them in a shanty by the side of a sawmill. Bill and Jule were hanging around the sawmill hands, Bill with his dice. Eli had seen them, Bill and Jule both, had even stopped to get a piece of string to mend his bridle.

‘His mare shied at the sawmill and broke her bridle, split her throat latch.’

His voice was dry and husky as he told of the broken throat latch, drawing near his story which now could no longer wait. Eli had thought he would stop in the shanty and borrow a piece of twine from the people that lived there, and there were Bill and Jule inside eating a sup of something. Jule was as dirty as ever and dirtier, offering dirty talk. There was a baby, just born a few days back, a girl baby. Eli said it was his child, Jonas’s; it looked like him; it had the same eyes and the same kind of face and the same dark hair.

‘Eli said it looked like Mammy, my mammy.’

They looked at the thought, sitting together in quiet, or they turned the thought about with a few brief words or a question. Jonas was still now, his hands holding his bowed head or folded together in a strong calm grasp. He had told no one but her, he said, and Eli would not tell.