Day after day, he was idle. He lay by the spring, drowsing, sometimes for hours, for at night he slept badly. At night, after lying for a long time in his bed, watching the square of the window of the little lean-to room, he would sit up, as though to leap out and perform some errand of overmastering magnitude. Once, even, he got up and put on his overalls and shoes, and went outdoors. The moon was very low, just at the wooded western rim of the little valley. The contours of objects now familiar to him — the trees, the barn, the fences, the bluffside — lost definition and merged and faltered aqueously in the shadows and in the uncertain striations of mist and dim light. He walked rapidly until he came to the fence that bordered the road. Then he stopped. He laid his hand to the rough rail, and stood and stared down the road, which was pale against the darkness of the brush beside it. Every slight sound of the night — the water falling, the whip-poor-will very far off, the uneasy shifting of the guinea hens in their trees back of the house — these sounds registered upon him, each perfect, isolated, vibrant with the small re-echo deep within his being. For how long a time he could not tell, he stood there in that anticipatory posture, his fingers gripping the rail, while those sounds, each individual in the wide silence, impinged upon him.

  Slowly, he relaxed his grip upon the rail. Those sounds, which had come to him individually and complete with a resonance like that of a struck bell, grew blurred, and dulled. He struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand. He said aloud: ‘God damn! God damn, I’ve got to do something.’ And again: ‘I’ve got to.’

  Then he felt exhausted. He only wanted to get back into the room, into the bed, to close his eyes. He moved toward the house, hunching his bare shoulders against the night chill.

  But some nights, when he did sleep, he had the dream. He had first dreamed it shortly after coming to the Proudfit place. At that time he had come to consciousness weak and sweating, filled with an unutterable grief. But now when he dreamed it, the grief was gone. Even in the dream now, he knew that it had been dreamed before.

  That first night he had been sitting out on the porch while Adelle Proudfit sang. Toward the end of the evening she sang about Pretty Polly.

  ‘Walk with me, Pretty Polly

  For we go to the church soon.’

  He said, ‘Now, Pretty Polly,

  It’s nigh the full of the moon.’

  ‘Not now, not now,’ said Pretty Polly,

  ‘I’ll walk some other day.’

  But he took her by her lily-white hand

  And led her far away.

  Absorbed in his own thoughts, he scarcely followed the tune and the story of sadness and hinted violence in the woods. But Adelle Proudfit’s voice was going on, moving in that melancholy rhythm:

  — wanderer be,

  For a ship sat at the seaside,

  And he got in that pretty ship

  To sail to the other side.

  He had not sailed not many miles

  When the awful storm came down

  And beat upon the pretty ship,

  Made it under the sea sink down.

  There he met his Pretty Polly

  All wrapped in gores of blood,

  And she held out in her lily-white arms,

  An infant was of mine.

  He had risen, and had walked away, across the yard.

  That night he had dreamed the dream. In the dream he saw May approaching him, slowly, as from a great distance across which he strained. Her pale hair was down, loose, and she held a bundle in her arms. On her face, as she approached him, there was a great sweetness, but a sadness, and she approached slowly, as though her feet were weighted with lead. Closer, she held out the bundle toward him. He saw that it was wrapped in old newspaper, stained and torn. Then, as he strained toward her and reached to take the bundle from her arms, the paper began to flake away from the bundle, as though disintegrating from its own sodden weight, hanging in shreds over May’s hands and bare arms. He saw, then, what the paper had concealed. There, on May’s outstretched arms, was a body, a foetus like those which he had seen suspended in liquid in great glass jars at the medical school at Philadelphia, ill-formed, inhuman, dripping, gray like the ones in the jars, and with a stench like death. But May’s face had retained the expression of sweetness and sadness, and his own arms had remained reaching toward her as though to take the bundle. Then, the last shreds of the sodden paper fell away from what was the face of that object in her arms. It was the face of Bunk Trevelyan, the redness of flesh and hair faded to grayness, but Trevelyan’s face, and somehow, he knew that it was alive and strove to speak. But always, at that moment, May began to laugh. He could not hear the sound, but her face was contorted in a paroxysm of laughter that he thought would never end. Then, not in fury but with a coldness of calculation, almost with a slyness, he raised his clenched fist, thinking that he must stop her laughter, that if she continued to laugh like that all would be lost, everything would shrivel and be blotted out and devoured, and there would be nothing but that soundless ferocity of laughter and himself alone in the midst of it. Then he woke up, that first time suspended, as it were, in the perfect, swollen, and untrembling medium of grief, which in itself was a kind of fulfillment, for in its absolute was posited the absolute worth of all lost happinesses. But now, when he woke up in the darkness of that little lean-to room of the Proudfit house, there was not even the grief.

  Some nights, when he could not sleep, he would retrace every incident of the morning when Turpin had been shot. He would say to himself, Now, I left the hotel at seven-twenty. The very look of the watch as he had held it in his hand would come back to him. And he would bring up before his mind the faces of the persons whom he had met on the street. He would repeat aloud, lying there in the dark, the very words they had spoken to him in greeting, and his own replies. He would try to re-create every familiar detail of the office, which he had seen when opening the door that morning: the desk, the bookcases, the chairs heaped with old books and papers, the courthouse and the leafing trees. He would grip those items hard in his mind, his very muscles tensing with the effort sometimes, as though by will he might force a reason out of their blank and taciturn irrationality.

  It was not to his violence that they surrendered their answer. Rather, the answer he finally had from them came almost unsought, casually, at the moment of his waking one morning, before he had fully defined himself in consciousness. He woke, that morning, and saw the shaft of sunlight striking through the window, the green bluffside beyond, and the rough boards of the wall. And at the instant when he identified those objects, his mind seemed to say to him, You are lying here, looking at those things, because Professor Ball killed that man.

  Then it seemed impossible.

  Then he was sure of it, as sure as if he had stood to watch Professor Ball, that morning, mount the darkened stairway and push open the unlocked door and, finding the office empty, stand there in the middle of the floor. Across the square, back of the courthouse, the men had been moving, Turpin and the deputies. And there in the corner of the office, the rifle had stood. And there on the shelf of the bookcase, behind the cracked glass, had been the cartridge box. And it had been done, all of it, in an instant. Near forty yards, Mr. Munn thought, near forty yards, and he probably hadn’t fired a gun since he was a boy. Out there, in the courthouse yard, Turpin had reeled and fallen on the grass with that hole over his left ear — Mr. Campbell had said that, over the ear — and as though unseeingly, Professor Ball had stood the rifle back in its corner, and had walked out, pulling the door shut behind him, and had gone down the back stairs.

  It was perfectly clear to Mr. Munn how it had happened. And how Professor Ball had moved down the alley, erectly, almost somnambulantly, his white, club-like bandages hanging out from under the black sleeves, and all the while the awareness of his act gradually growing within him. When the force of it struck him, and he understood the full context, he must have intended to go to the hotel and see Cordelia and his other daughters — but especially Cordelia — and tell them good-bye and give himself up. Or had anything been so precise and clear to him then, as he moved down that deserted alley and the sounds of the street reached him unheeded? Mr. Munn was not sure. Perhaps, as he moved down the alley, nothing had seemed quite real to him, and everything had hung suspended in the timelessness of a dream. He might have wandered about the streets for half a day, there was no telling, looking at people and not seeing them, scarcely knowing that his feet proceeded in their regular, dignified tread, and that people stared at his pale and stony-looking face.

  Then, later, with Cordelia beside him, and with Portia laying the cool cloths to his forehead, he must have thought, I’ll do it in a little while, just a little while and I’ll tell them, and I’ll go. But he had not.

  The bitterness rose in Mr. Munn at the thought. He had run through the blind woods; he had lain in the cold mud and filth and had sucked water into his mouth like a beast; he had gone hungry and had hidden from the sight of people, because Professor Ball had not been able to speak, and say that he had done it. Because Professor Ball had thought, I’ll do it in a little while, just as soon as the trial is over and my little girl doesn’t need me any more, I’ll do it then. Then the trial was over, and Doctor MacDonald was free, and he had not done it.

  The days had passed, and he had not been able to speak. When he had heard that Mr. Munn was safe, and hiding, he must have told himself that he would wait, just a little longer; that if they caught Mr. Munn, he would speak up and say he had done it. Meanwhile, the movement of ordinary life in his own house, the sight of his daughters doing their tasks quietly and competently about him, the routine of the occupations on the farm, all those things must have lulled him, and drawn him insidiously, hour by hour, day by day, from his purpose. But, at night, in his room, he must have read his Bible, and struck it with his bandaged hands in his agony and confusion, and walked the floor, sweating like a man who wrestles with a too powerful opponent, and prayed for strength. He had found a strength in himself for acts of which he had never dreamed himself capable. ‘It’s surprising what a man’ll find in himself,’ he had said that first night, a long time back now, at the Christian house — and Mr. Munn could remember his face and his very voice as he had said it — ‘when the time comes.’ The time had come. He had stumbled upon it that morning in the deserted office, unexpectedly as on a stone in a familiar path. He had lifted the rifle, clumsily in his bandaged, unaccustomed hands, and over there in the courthouse yard, in the clear daylight, the man had fallen.

  He had never guessed that strength in himself. It had lain hidden all the years of his life, until the time came. But now he could not find in himself another strength in which he had lived, so he had thought, always.

  Later, thinking back on those things, Mr. Munn discovered that his bitterness was gone. If he should see Professor Ball, he himself, he decided, would be the one to feel guilty and ashamed, as though he had committed the wrong. If he should be taken, or if he should give himself up, then Professor Ball, he was sure, would speak. He had a momentary vision of Professor Ball’s face as it would be if they should meet, the face thin and arid and contorted in its pain. Involuntarily, shudderingly, he closed his eyes as against the actual sight, as one does at the obscenity of suffering.

  His discovery, he determined, if it was a discovery, had solved nothing for him. He sank back, as before, into the privacy of that world screened from all the world outside by the green leaves of the bluff or the boards of the little lean-to room. Into that privacy the thought of what he had been or what he might become filtered only thinly, sourcelessly, like light into a submarine depth.

  Day after day, there would be nothing to obtrude upon him on the bluffside. Only once, late one afternoon, Sylvestus had come up the bluff and had squatted there on his heels in the pressed-down grass. The sweat stained darkly his blue shirt, and the sleeves stuck to his arms. When he took his hat off, the thick hair was matted clammily on his head, with a line pressed into it where the band of the hat had been. ‘Hit’s cool up here,’ he said, ‘but today, hit was a scorcher fer fair. The sun a-bearen down in the field.’ He took his knife from his pocket, opened the heavy blade, and began, with deliberation, to trim a stick which he found lying there before him. ‘In the field,’ he repeated, appearing to study the stick. ‘But I reckin you didn’t know, hit cool up here lak hit is.’ He turned his dark, acrimonious glance upon Mr. Munn, then resumed his whittling. Mr. Munn said nothing.

  ‘I ain’t a man to shun and shirk,’ Sylvestus said. ‘No man kin say hit. Anything air man kin do, I kin do. And will do. But a man’s got a right to know he don’t sweat fer nuthen. Hit’ll be a drout, and sweat fer nuthen.’ He paused, studying the stick. ‘A drout,’ he repeated.

  ‘It’s too early to tell,’ Mr. Munn rejoined.

  ‘I kin tell. Ever time, I kin tell!’ He swung toward Mr. Munn resentfully. ‘I seen a blade of corn today, yaller, and hit long a-fore tosselen time. Hit’s a curse come on the land, the way folks been revelen and carryen on.’ He rose abruptly from his squatting position, and flung the stick into the spring. ‘Sweat fer nuthen,’ he uttered.

  He stood there indecisively, the rigidity seeming to go from his body. He clicked the knife blade shut. ‘I didn’t mean nuthen,’ he said sullenly, not looking at Mr. Munn, ‘about yore layen up here.’ Then he turned, and before Mr. Munn could answer, plunged off down the trail.

  That evening at supper Sylvestus had nothing to say to anyone. He ate with his eyes fixed upon his plate, doggedly. He did not join the others on the porch after supper, but stayed in the kitchen. ‘A-readen,’ Willie Proudfit told them. ‘He’ll be a-readen past moon-set lak as not, if hit’s a spell come on him. Till they ain’t no oil to the wick.’

  ‘One mornen I found him,’ Adelle Proudfit said, speaking quietly, ‘with his head a-layen on the table, in the kitchen. And the oil plumb gone, and the wick burnt out, and him asleep. He lifted up his head, real slow, and said to me: “I slept, and Him in the Garden.” Lak a man might say good mornen, and no diff’rence to his voice.’

  ‘I recollect,’ her husband responded, ‘and that day he worked hard in the field as air man could.’

  ‘I n’er seen one so young study so on salvation. Goen on twenty-four.’

  ‘A ring-tail fer work,’ Willie Proudfit said.

  Sylvestus never came back up the bluff, but every baking day Sissie brought him a couple of rolls wrapped in a piece of white cloth. She would never sit down and he was never able to engage her in conversation. She would stand, holding her hands clasped together at the level of her waist, as was her habit, and watch him while he ate the bread. She always watched him until he had eaten the last crumb, and then, always, she left him. He would thank her, or sometimes would say, ‘Why don’t you sit down and talk to me, Sissie?’ But it was always the same: one instant she was there, with her dark eyes unwaveringly watching him while he put the last fragment to his lips, and the next instant, suddenly, she was gone.

  Only one time, toward the end of his stay at the Proudfit place, did she wait after he had finished eating the bread. He asked her to sit down, but she did not reply, only shaking her head. When he raised his face from the spring, after drinking, she stooped to pick up the little square of white cloth, and smoothing and folding it in her hands, she said, ‘Mr. Perse ——’

  ‘Yes, Sissie?’

  ‘Mr. Perse’ — and she paused, smoothing the cloth — ‘Aunt Dellie, she said they’s word yore wife’s had a little baby.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  ‘Hit’s a little boy,’ she added, ‘ain’t hit?’

  ‘Yes, Sissie.’

  She laid the cloth between the palms of her hands, and held it there. Then she asked, ‘What’s hit’s name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  She looked at him for a moment, and then, without a word, was gone.

  He could not see her as she went down the trail. He watched the open space between the bluff and the house, waiting for her to appear. She emerged from the greenery at last, and moved rapidly toward the house. A little smoke was rising from the kitchen chimney, even though it wasn’t much past middle of the afternoon. Then he remembered that she had brought him the bread. They were baking.

  The smoke stood motionless, in a long, gray-blue streamer that faded out into the clear air, higher than the bluff-top.

  After a little while the girl came out of the house. She carried a bucket in her hand, and he caught a glint of sunlight from it as it swayed with her step. Her figure, shrunk to such a smallness in the distance, moved across the yard and over the stile into the field by the creek. He saw her go down the field between the rows of young plants. At the far end of the field the two men were hoeing. She was carrying them some fresh water to drink.

  She approached them, and their motions ceased. Then the figures were all together in one place, there at the far end of the field, very small.

  They would unhook their hands from the hoe handle, and push their hats back a little off the forehead. Their lips would be dry, and on their teeth would be the slight grittiness of dust raised from the dry ground. In turn, Willie Proudfit first, then Sylvestus, they would lift the bucket to the lips and let the cool water fill the mouth and slip, sweetly and purifyingly, into the throat. Then they would thank the girl, and look inquiringly at the sun, and grip their hoes, and bend again over the hard earth, each in his way; and the hoes would rise and fall, unflaggingly. The drouth might come. The plants which they had placed in the ground might shrivel and wither there. Or next year the two men themselves might not be there. The place might be lost by that time. Willie Proudfit might be in Oklahoma, there was no telling. Sylvestus might be gone somewhere. But now their hoes rose and fell. They were moving down the field, imperceptibly, surely, as into their future. Beyond them, in other fields out of sight, other men were, and women in houses, and men in the streets of the towns.