From the kitchen came the sounds of heavy china disposed hastily, dull clacks of plates and cups. In the mirror she saw her face under the new hat and she wondered at the fresh new shape it brought to her chin and to her mouth. MacMurtrie must open the road, the men said; he would have to let them out, and there was an argument as to the law. ‘Go up to him and say, by God, open up that road,’ a voice broke in a low snarl. ‘Say open up, by God, or we’ll open for you. Go as a mob and say…’ Nannie’s voice spoke then, deeply admonishing, asking for peace, for time, bidding them wait, and then an impatient cry from some younger O’Shay, deep and demanding. Ellen took off the hat and looked at it closely, at its little bits of red velvet twilled into a strange flower, pleasant odours coming out of the velvet and out of the new clean felt. A flower stood on the turned-up brim close to her hair. When she put the hat on again Jonas smiled across toward her from his seat by the chimney but the mutterings went on, now low and complaining, now breaking into angry snarls and threats and after a little growing low and cunning. Jonas had seen her in the hat and he had smiled to see her bright skin under the red bits of the winter flower. She remembered such a flower from some summer, but not in Miss Tod’s garden. Such a flower grew beside a path somewhere, among blue flowers and yellow ones, a low flower, not a pansy and not a marigold. She thought that the flower she remembered was not red perhaps, but alike to this in shape while this had the red of some deep red pansy in Miss Tod’s border.

Jonas smiled across at her in the way of the summer that was past and her need for him grew with the deep glow of the flower and with the soft rich mesh of the velvet petals. ‘Let Cassie MacMurtrie do hit,’ a voice was muttering. ‘Let Cassie.’ It came to her then, looking into the heart of the blossom as she held the hat in her hand, that it could only be a short while now until Miss Cassie would know the thing she herself knew, for everybody now seemed to know of Scott and Amanda Cain. ‘Let Cassie.’ They had only to wait, a voice said. ‘Bide your time and don’t say e’er word more about that-there road. I give Scott a week now and that’s all.’ Another voice, high-pitched and angered, foretelling, ‘I know Cassie Beal. I went to school along with her down on the creek.’ Another, low and more final, ‘I’d like to see Scott when Cassie gets done. There won’t be enough of Scott MacMurtrie left to wad a gun with… Like throwen a lame rabbit in amongst a pack of fifty starved hound dogs.’ ‘Bide your time. Old Scott, if there’s e’er rag of him left, will clear out from here in less time than a week now.’ ‘Let Cass MacMurtrie do hit for us. I know Cassie Beal. She’s made outen fire and hell. Bide your time.’