“Run to the station!” he shouted at Ben, who was in the midst of dealing with a salesman from New York. “Keep him from getting on the train! Bring him back!”

Somehow Ben did it, reaching Domenico on the platform and persuading him to return with him to the store.

“Pazzo,” Serafino greeted him gruffly, but there were tears in his eyes as he put his arm around the shoemaker’s shoulder. “Were you going off to spite yourself? Stay so that you can tell your grandchildren how the stupidest thing Serafino Longobardi ever did was to send his son to the station to keep you here so you could go on insulting him at Scalise’s.”

In that incident with Domenico, Serafino understood the fullness of his own good fortune; he felt that he, the unlettered shepherd, had been propelled by a destiny he didn’t understand, while Domenico, who deserved more, was left behind. Serafino wanted his friend to understand that he esteemed him and that he knew that fortune had been capricious in rewarding only backs and muscles. But such feeling made Umbertina impatient.

In the winter, in the warmth of her home, Umbertina wondered, as great storms of snow fell on that city of upstate New York, about being laid to rest in a land where snow would cover her grave. She began to think of death as she watched Serafino age and get weaker. She would glance at the tin heart she had worn as a goat girl, which now hung in her kitchen, and think of herself then and now. Sometimes she wondered how it would have been to be wife to a younger man. Would she have done as much? No, no, she thought; my life went as it had to, and it is the right way.

When the great war broke out in Europe in 1914, Umbertina gave thanks for their being there, in America, safe and well fed, her family growing in grandchildren—and for the return home of Paul. Chastened by lack of success and ailing, he had come back to a great family celebration promoted by Umbertina in which Serafino was made to feel ashamed for what he had done. Paul was brought into the wholesale business and made a salesman for the territory around Cato, canvassing the small towns and getting orders.