He did not answer. He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his dark head against the roughness of oak-bark.

Florry thought, “Mart’s in trouble, shore.”

“I knows how you feels,” she said comfortingly.

She moved away to build the night’s mosquito smudge and sat down in the slow gray drift of smoke. She frowned anxiously, seizing at thoughts that swept by like the wild flight of doves. She had felt secure so long. Now security was slipping away. Mart’s despair was quicksand under her feet. In the old days of the cypress swamp her courage had stood like a wind-break against old Jo and the chill brown waters. Since the day she had gone away with Mart, through wind and rain, she had not needed courage.

“—burden down——”

She had laid her burden down on his lean, strong knees. She thought, “I’ve done had me a rest, like.” A burden laid down could be picked up again.

“Mart,” she said, “likely you’re worrit up about me. You belong to know I ain’t skeert, not one leetle mite.”

“You leetle ol’ froggy thing, you,” he said gently, “rabbity, like your daddy said——”

His voice turned harsh.

“You belong to be skeert.”

He spat in the smoky fire and swung forward so that he sat on his heels, rocking.

“Hit ain’t like I was a sorry thing wouldn’t do a man’s work nor a day’s work, neither,” he said passionately. “You know I’ve scratched like a hound dog at a gopher hole. Nor I ain’t been pertickler what ’twas I done, fishin’ or trappin’ or ’shinin’ or sich. Excusin’ workin’ for a Yankee,” he corrected himself.

“I cain’t work for folkses that-a-way, nohow,” he said unhappily. “Do they git biggety, I git uppity, an’ it’s trouble shore. An’ ever’thing I done, Florry, has got so messed up there wa’n’t no straightenin’ to it. Storms an’ sich, a-spoilin’ the fishin’, an’ other fellers’ meanness a-spoilin’ t’other things. Hain’t done nary good to kep’ a-workin’, no more good than squattin’ by a creek with a catfish line.”

He wiped his wet face with his shirt sleeve.

“You belong to be skeert, a’right. There ain’t nothin’ left to try. There ain’t no’eres left to go. We been a-climbin’ ol’ Jacob’s ladder thouten no end to it.”

“Them trapses—” she interrupted.

“Them trapses finished us off, shore,” he said. “Did I try to trap on shares for that storekeepin’ buzzard, I’d owe him twicet the hides, come the year’s end. Him takin’ the trapses finished us. An’ the heat, Florry.” His eyes rested on her appealingly, like those of a dog. “Seems like the heat’s plumb wore me out.”

His head drooped forward between his knees. Florry brushed away the mosquitoes on his hair. She threw a handful of oak leaves on the smudge.

“He’s like to had the chidlin’s beat out of him,” she thought.