‘All the time he was coming out to see papa. Before the bust-up. He was after me. He’d put his hands on me every chance he got. He’d say, “My dear girl, my dear Lucille ——” ’ She spoke mincingly, twisting her mouth in mimicry. ‘That’s what he’d say, “My dear girl, my dear girl ——” ’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of him in a long time,’ Mr. Munn remarked, almost reflectively, ‘not really.’ Then he exclaimed suddenly, with cold ferocity, ‘The bastard!’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I feel sorry for him. I did even then, when he was after me, and I was sick at my stomach.’

  ‘ “My dear girl, my dear girl ——” ’ he repeated mincingly. He got to his feet, and thrust his head out toward her, and glared at her as though in hatred. ‘I’d like to cut his God-damned heart out,’ he cried.

  ‘He’s nothing,’ she said, and repeated the words, shaking her head, slowly, from side to side, and moving her hands in a slight gesture of dismissal, like a sick person whose strength is failing.

  ‘I could,’ he insisted.

  ‘He’s nothing,’ she repeated, and she shook her head, slowly, rebukingly. ‘Even Chivers,’ she added; ‘he was something.’

  He let himself sink again to the edge of the bed, and sat there, looking at her.

  ‘It’s late,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘Maybe I oughtn’t to have come,’ she suggested expressionlessly.

  ‘Maybe,’ he answered.

  ‘I thought I had to,’ she said.

  At the door, pausing with her hand on the wooden latch, she turned to look again at him, as though about to speak. He was sitting, as before, with his elbows propped on his parted knees, his forearms hanging loosely between them, and his eyes were fixed on the chair, across the room, where she had been sitting. She opened the door, cautiously, a little way, and slipped through the aperture. The door drew to behind her, and the bar of the latch, with a slight, woody scraping, sank into its socket.

  After a while he got up from the bed, and moved to the lamp, and leaned toward it, and blew out the flame. No light showed yet at the window. The breeze had died down long before, and an uncertain drizzle had now begun. Its freshness penetrated into the dull air of the room. While outside, on the leaves and the grass, the tentative susurrus of the rain proceeded, he stood there in the dark room.

  When Mr. Munn first came out to the back porch, Willie Proudfit was coming up the path with a bucket of milk in each hand. He waited until he had come within a few paces, and then said, ‘Good morning.’ Willie Proudfit answered him gravely and went on into the kitchen. Mr. Munn stood there for a moment, hearing the slosh of the milk being poured, and then moved off the porch into the yard. The hard-packed earth of the path looked scarcely damp. The leaves and the grass, however, were wet, and beads of water hung here and there, glistening in the clear light.

  Willie Proudfit came out of the kitchen door, and approached him. Without speaking, he stood for a moment beside Mr. Munn, casting his glance slowly about him over the yard and the bluffside, and then at the sky, as though he were making his first appraisal of the new morning. Finally he began, ‘Perse ——’ and then hesitated, still not turning toward Mr. Munn.

  ‘Yes?’ Mr. Munn asked.

  ‘Perse ——’ and he hesitated again. Then he swung round toward Mr. Munn. ‘I ain’t one to beat round the bush,’ he said. ‘Sumthen gits in my head, and I says hit. Hit ain’t in me to do no other way. You know they ain’t nuthen right and proper I wouldn’t do fer you. You know my house is yore’n fer you to stay in, and me proud to say hit. But they’s sumthen fer me to tell.’

  ‘All right,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  ‘Last night Miss Christian come in yore room, and you was thar. She come ——’

  ‘That’s not ——’ Mr. Munn began, but the other man had raised his hand, almost as in command, and continued:

  ‘She come in thar. Sylvestus seen her a-goen. He was come-en up on the porch to lay down on his pallet, and he seen her. And this mornen he come to me and told me. He done accorden to his lights, tellen me. Hit ain’t right, Perse. I was ne’er one to be tellen other folks their doens. A man’s got a time keepen clear and easy in his own mind, but hit ain’t right, Perse. Not in Dellie’s house. Hit ain’t acten right to Dellie. Hit’s kicken up dirt in Dellie’s face.’ He looked at Mr. Munn’s face, which was as expressionless as wood. Mr. Munn was not even looking at him. Then he reached out to touch Mr. Munn on the arm, and concluded: ‘Hit was in me to be a-sayen hit. And I done said hit.’

  Mr. Munn still did not look at him, saying: ‘Lucille Christian came to my room. She had something to tell me. Something to tell me, she couldn’t wait to tell me, she thought. She told me that, and we talked about it. And she left.’ He turned his eyes upon him, and added, ‘That was all.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you sayen hit,’ Willie Proudfit said. He took his hand from Mr. Munn’s arm.

  ‘That was all,’ Mr. Munn repeated slowly.

  ‘I ain’t a-doubten,’ Willie Proudfit told him. ‘I know you ain’t one to let air man be a-doubten yore word. When you done said hit.’

  ‘It happens to be true.’

  ‘I ain’t a-doubten,’ Willie Proudfit said again.

  ‘She’s going away this morning. Like she planned. So Sylvestus needn’t worry.’ He stopped, appeared to be reflecting, then amended: ‘I’m sorry I said that. That last. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  They began to move back toward the house.

  Just before they reached the porch, Mr. Munn stopped. ‘Bill Christian is dead,’ he said quietly. ‘He died four days ago.’

  ‘Last night,’ Willie Proudfit exclaimed, ‘last night she said he was gitten on!’

  ‘He is dead. That was one of the things she came to tell me.’

  ‘Dead,’ Willie Proudfit repeated, as though bringing the thought to slow realization, ‘and me sayen what I said.’ Then he added: ‘Hit makes a man feel lak dirt, inside. Sayen them things. Thinken ’em.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mr. Munn said.

  They went on, into the kitchen.

  At breakfast nobody talked much. Adelle Proudfit talked some, and Lucille Christian, but the others were silent. Toward the end of the meal, they, too, became silent. Lucille Christian’s face was very pale, and the skin seemed to be drawn painfully tight across the bone.

  After breakfast Sylvestus, who was to take Lucille Christian to the railroad at Ashby’s Crossing, went to the stable to harness the horse. The others remained seated at the table for a little while longer, and then went out to the front porch to wait for him. He drove the buggy to the gate, got out and hitched the horse, and approached the porch, where the others were standing in silence. When he came up, Lucille Christian, looking over the fields that lay along the creek, said almost casually, ‘Well, we did get a little rain, after all.’

  Standing on the ground just at the edge of the porch before her, Sylvestus abruptly struck the toe of his shoe into the earth, and stared down at the scar he had made. ‘Hit ain’t nuthen,’ he returned. ‘Hit ain’t more’n laid the dust. Hit ain’t cleaned air leaf in the field.’

  ‘I thought it might help a little,’ she replied.

  He dragged his foot across the mark it had made. ‘Hit ain’t nuthen,’ he repeated, as though not to her.

  She told them good-bye, shaking hands with each one, Mr. Munn last. ‘I want to thank you for all the trouble you’ve taken,’ she said to Adelle Proudfit. ‘I’m grateful and I won’t forget.’

  ‘We taken none,’ the other woman responded. ‘And we want you to come a-visiten. When you kin.’

  ‘Real visiten,’ Willie Proudfit added.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She took one step, to the edge of the porch, as though about to go. She stopped, hesitated an instant, then turned, and quickly leaning over, kissed Sissie on the cheek. ‘Good-bye,’ she said, speaking quickly, embarrassedly, and went down the path. She moved rapidly, and did not look back until the buggy had drawn a little way down the lane. Then her hand waved once to them.

  They stood on the porch, watching the buggy recede, slowly, down the valley. Already the sun bore down brilliantly on the length of the field by the lane, and the earth steamed in the light.

  Adelle Proudfit and the girl went into the house before the buggy was out of sight, but the men waited. When it was gone, Willie Proudfit remarked meditatively: ‘Hit makes a man feel lak dirt, sayen them things. Her pappy dead, and her lak she is.’

  Mr. Munn made no answer.

  Without speaking again, Willie Proudfit stepped off the porch and walked toward the stables.

  Mr. Munn leaned against the corner post of the porch. The buggy was gone now, hidden by the foliage at the last visible turn of the lane. Willie Proudfit had gone into the stables. He would be sitting there, on a chunk in the musty shadow of the hall, with a piece of broken gear across his knees, mending it. The brown skin of his brow would be wrinkled in attention under the pale hair. Or he might be sharpening a blade, for hay was to cut soon. Such as it was. The sound of the file on steel — small, stern, measured — would be the only sound.

  For some time Mr. Munn remained there, looking down the lane, then off across the fields. From the house behind him there came, now and then, the muffled clatter and chink of dishes and pans, or the low murmur of the voices of the women as they moved about their occupations. Some jays wrangled distantly on the bluffside. Then they catapulted brilliantly, glitteringly, across the empty sky, to hide themselves in the mass of the white oak by the gate. Mr. Munn straightened himself, stepped off the porch, and walked toward the bluff.

  He stayed on the bluff all day, except for a little time when he went down to eat a silent meal with the others. He lay on his back and looked up at the sky, absorbed in that emptiness, that perfection. There were no clouds, not even a little white boll stabilized singly and gleamingly in the upper distance. Once, toward the middle of the afternoon, he noticed the steady, black fleck of a buzzard which spiraled up, southward, into the area of his vision. He watched it for a while, then grew tired, and turned away. When he looked again, it had been lost in the central reaches of the throbbing brightness. Willie Proudfit, he thought, had once lain on those high mountains, far away. He had stared into the thin blueness of that strange sky. What had he found there? What, Mr. Munn demanded. He could not say. He closed his eyes.

  When the sun, reddening and heavy, was almost touching the ridge to the west, he went down the path from the bluff.

  After supper, when they had all gone out to the porch, Mr. Munn did not sit down. He leaned against a post of the porch, his back toward the others. The fireflies glowed and dimmed, minutely, rising from the ground in the open space of the yard and pasture. Sylvestus coughed, and scraped his shoes on the boards.

  ‘Ain’t you gonna set?’ Willie Proudfit asked him.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Mr. Munn said, not turning.

  ‘Maybe, he ain’t tahrd,’ Sylvestus remarked distinctly, but almost as though to himself.

  ‘No, Sylvestus,’ Mr. Munn told him, not turning, ‘I’m not, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Sing a little sumthen, Dellie,’ Willie Proudfit urged. ‘I feel lak hit.’

  She began almost wordlessly, stopped, and began again. She sang:

  Thar’s a land that is fairer than day

  And by faith I seen hit afar,

  And our Father ——

  She broke off. ‘I ain’t right fer hit,’ she explained. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Set down, Perse,’ Willie Proudfit said, a hint of fretfulness in his tone.

  Mr. Munn did not answer. Then he asked: ‘Willie, is Senator Tolliver still staying where he was? In that place over near Monclair?’

  ‘Tolliver,’ Willie Proudfit said meditatively, and paused.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The last I hear’d he was thar,’ Willie Proudfit answered. And added: ‘A man plumb ruint tonight. And him what he was.’

  ‘He was a bad man,’ Adelle Proudfit’s voice declared.

  ‘Set down,’ Willie Proudfit invited.

  Mr. Munn turned and looked at their forms in the shadow. ‘Willie,’ he said. ‘Willie, I’m leaving.’

  After a moment Willie Proudfit answered, ‘Naw, naw, Perse’ — his voice quiet — ‘you ain’t a-leave-en.’

  ‘Yes, I’m leaving,’ Mr. Munn insisted, ‘tonight.’

  ‘They ain’t no use to be leave-en.’

  ‘There’s a use,’ Mr. Munn said slowly, ‘I think.’

  The other man got up from the floor, where he had been lying. ‘Naw ——’ he began, ‘naw ——’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  No one spoke for a moment. The insects made their dry, rasping, continuous sound off in the trees by the lane.

  ‘If Dellie will give me those pones left over from supper. And maybe a little bacon.’ He stopped, then went on: ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘I’ll fix you sumthen, I’ll cook you some ——’ She rose from her chair, and stood there uncertainly, not finishing her sentence. ‘You’re not a-leaven-en,’ she said, then.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mr. Munn answered. ‘I’ll just take those corn pones, and be going.’

  ‘Is hit in you?’ Willie Proudfit demanded. ‘Set in yore mind?’

  ‘It’s set in my mind,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  ‘You shore?’

  ‘I decided this morning. I was waiting,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘till dark.’ He moved past them into the house, and started groping his way across the room. Willie Proudfit followed him blunderingly. Then a match spurted, and the dark leaped back, shriveling suddenly back from the flame in Willie Proudfit’s fingers. He lighted the lamp.

  He followed Mr. Munn on back into the little lean-to room, and stood there, holding the lamp.

  ‘I just wanted to get a few things,’ Mr. Munn explained, almost apologetically; ‘those handkerchiefs you got for me over at Thebes, and a few things.’

  ‘Hit ain’t ——’ Willie Proudfit started. He was studying the flame of the lamp in his hand, watching its small waverings. ‘Hit ain’t what I said this mornen?’

  ‘That? I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘My house is yore’n to rest in, Perse.’

  ‘I know it,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘It wasn’t that.’

  The other man seemed unable to withdraw his gaze from the flame behind the smudged and smoky glass. He said, watching the flame, ‘You come-en back?’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Mr. Munn assured him.

  Willie Proudfit raised his eyes and looked at him. ‘If’n hit’s sumthen laid on a man,’ he observed, ‘I ain’t sayen air nuther word.’

  Mr. Munn lighted the other lamp. ‘I’ll get my things, now,’ he said.

  There was the sound of the woman moving about in the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll go help Dellie,’ Willie Proudfit said.

  ‘I don’t need anything but the pones,’ Mr. Munn told him. But before he had finished speaking, the other man was gone.

  When he left, they stood on the porch to say good-bye. He shook hands with them. ‘Be come-en back,’ Adelle Proudfit said thinly.

  ‘He’ll be come-en back,’ her husband interrupted, his voice almost harsh.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn said.

  Willie Proudfit offered him the horse, but he said no, it was safer without it. Then Willie Proudfit said he could take him a piece in the buggy. He said no, and thanked him, and began to walk toward the gate. He was almost halfway when Willie Proudfit caught up with him. He stood, and laid his hand on Mr. Munn’s arm. ‘Hit wasn’t this mornen?’ he demanded.

  ‘No,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  Adelle Proudfit came after them, and they went as far as the gate together.

  It took two nights to reach the neighborhood of Monclair. He had spent the first day in an abandoned cabin which he found in the woods. He came upon it just after dawn when he struck off to the right from the road, hunting water. He had crossed a bridge over a little branch some three miles up the road. It was flowing southward, and since the valley was relatively narrow, he expected to hit it within half a mile or so off the road.

  He saw the wide space of sky that opened, milky blue and pale and opalescent, above the spot where the big trees stopped. That, he guessed immediately, was the place where an old clearing had been. But it was now overgrown with brush, with sassafras, elder, second-growth gum, and sumac. A few birds were stirring in the tangle, uttering their first, tentative calls. The dew was heavy on the still leaves. He stood at the edge for a moment. Then he saw the chimney of the cabin.

  He pushed his way into the clearing, toward the cabin. There would be water there, he guessed. He came to the remains of a rail fence, rotting now, and so tumbled-down that he could step over it. He passed close to the cabin. The windows were empty. There had never been glass in them, just board shutters which now, with one exception, had fallen from their hinges. The door was broken off. It lay on the ground, and between the cracks in its boards, the grass had thrust. When he got to the corner of the cabin, he heard the sound of water riffling. He found the branch at the back edge of the clearing.

  He came back, after drinking and bathing his face, and went to the cabin. When he stepped on the fallen door, one board gave rottenly beneath his weight, so that he almost stumbled. With his arms he struck down the cobwebs, now sagging with dew, that barred the entrance, and went in. There were only two rooms, both very small, and a loft. He walked softly about, almost cautiously, and the old puncheons twisted a little at his tread. At the chimney, patches of sky were visible, for the logs had sagged, pulling away. He looked at a corner. The logs had been badly notched, with weak, slovenly strokes. Most of the chinking was gone. In the first room, there was no object except a hewn bench, from which two legs were missing, and the ladder to the loft. In the other room he saw a glass jar, unbroken, sitting on the ledge of a window. In the bottom was a little accumulation of unidentifiable filth, and above, the glass was bone dry. The light struck dully through the stained transparency. Against the wall, he made out a small huddle of clothing, lying as dropped there. He stepped to it, and on a momentary impulse leaned to pick it up, gingerly, between his thumb and forefinger. A flat, black beetle, polished clean like a button, moved unhurriedly from the spot where it had been concealed, and disappeared beneath the bottom log. Mr. Munn held up the object. It was a man’s jacket, once blue, now faded splotchily to dun. The fabric was unyielding and wooden in his hand. It had long since lost the shape of the figure it had clothed, and had stiffened earthily, once and for all, to the contour of the surface on which it had lain. When he dropped it, it struck dryly on the puncheon.