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his hair from his eyes and hands it to me. It has a good feel, it shoots straight. I tell him I will oil all the parts for him, but I take it and go to our summer pastures up the valley. I suppose I have stolen it, and I am sorry but not so very sorry. Hill does not come up here, he is keeping on with school to please his father, and his father does not wish him to be near me. I try not to think of Hill, but at times I think of the night he married me to little Molly Black, now dead of the fever. I think of my lip on Molly’s cheek. I am sorry she is gone.
    With Ma I stay in the scratchy grassland for months while the rest of the family is at home. I look after the cows and take the milk and butter down the hills to the spring cellar at home for her.I wheedle her to tell me her old Welsh story about wolves stealing into houses in the night and picking up babies in their teeth, then taking them off to their dens to live as wolf children. She does not like this tale, especially up here near the woods, but I do. Sitting at our fire we hear cold howls far away on occasion. Ma always goes into the little cabin then, but I wheel about slowly with Hill’s gun, looking into the trees with one eye shut. I would shoot a wolf if I saw one. Israel got one once after it killed a sheep and tore open the chicken house at Uncle James’s place. Its eyes were yellow. I did not like to look at it when he dragged it home, though dead wolves are worth quite a lot of money from a magistrate. Granddaddy is a magistrate still, even in his aged condition, but I will not go to his house alone again, even if I get a wolf.
    Ma touches my shoulder as I sit beside her. She misses Sallie, her first child, and she thinks of the younger ones at home, Neddy and Squire and little Hannah. So it gives her pleasure to coddle me for a short time. She tells the wolf story and strokes my head and says:
    —Such hair. Sweet Neddy got the rest. And now what have I left?
    Her hair has thinned, it is full of white threads. I was born with a black thatch, thick as hers once was. Her favourite boy Neddy has the same. He is like me but with a sweeter countenance. The rest are like Daddy, paler and gingery, though Israel’s hair is a dark brown with red in it like embers, as I recall. We have not seen him in more than a month.
    With my club I fell a red finch and then two more birds on their way to their trees. I pluck and gut them and cook them on a stick for Ma. The birds’ legs stand out straight, crisped in the smoke. She says:
    —A pity to eat the little singers.
    But she does eat them. The evening smells of warm grass and cows’ bodies. I can see the horseshoe-shaped valley below, the Schuylkill River at the end and the creeks running along like threads, and the house no more than a stump. I say:
    —Ma, where do you think Israel is?
    Without answering, she gets up to bring in the herd for evening milking. She calls:
    —Ah. Here with you, you Ham.
    I have given this name to all the cows. Ma humours me. The bells clank round her, she hums a flat little tune. She is worried about Israel and about what will become of us in Exeter, I know, though she keeps up a calm appearance. The corn and wheat did not come good this year, and Daddy says we must get fresh land for planting. For now I will stay. I will hunt and get her anything she wishes. So I think to myself. I am happy here alone with her in the fields, perhaps it is the happiest time of my life. Perhaps we get happy times to measure our unhappiness against later. Ma, I remember you.

    It is September and cooler when a grey shape appears out of the higher hills across the pasturage. The sun is just coming up, Ma is still in the little dairy cabin fetching the pails. I stand up with the gun and aim. A sharp laugh comes:
    —Do not shoot me yet. You do not even know who I am.
    But I do know. Israel comes with his hands up and then sets his bag outside the cabin door. He grins through his beard and lies down in