Dan sat by the table. Dumpling, Ned's three-year-old daughter, sat on Dan's knee; you could see her scarlet cheeks and yellow hair above the grey frieze of his coat-sleeve. His mournful black-and-white face stooped to her in earnest, respectful attention. He was taking a piece of butterscotch out of the silver paper. Dumpling opened her wet, red mouth. Rachel, Ned's wife, watched them, her lips twisted in a fond, wise smile, as she pressed the big loaf to her breast and cut thick slices of bread-and-jam. She had made a place for you beside her. "She sengs ersen to slape wid a li'l' song she maakes," Rachel said. "Tha'll seng that li'l' song for Mester Dan, wuntha?" Dumpling hid her face and sang. You had to stoop to hear the cheeping that came out of Dan's shoulder. "Aw, dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin', Dy-Doomplin', dy-Doomplin', Dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin', Dy-Doomplin' daay." "Ef tha'll seng for Mester Dan," Farmer Alderson said, "tha'llt seng for tha faather, wuntha, Doomplin'?" "Naw." "For Graffer then?" "Naw." Dumpling put her head on one side, butting under Dan's chin like a cat. Dan's arm drew her closer. He was happy there, in the Aldersons' kitchen, holding Dumpling on his knee. There was something in his happiness that hurt you as Roddy's unhappiness had hurt. All your life you had never really known Dan, the queer, scowling boy who didn't notice you, didn't play with you as Roddy played or care for you as Mark had cared. And suddenly you knew him; better even than Roddy, better than Mark. III. The grey byre was warm with the bodies of the cows and their grassy, milky breath. Dan, in his clean white shirt sleeves, crouched on Ned's milking stool, his head pressed to the cow's curly red and white flank. His fingers worked rhythmically down the teat and the milk squirted and hissed and pinged against the pail. Sometimes the cow swung round her white face and looked at Dan, sometimes she lashed him gently with her tail. Ned leaned against the stall post and watched. "Thot's t' road, thot's t' road. Yo're the foorst straanger she a' let milk 'er. She's a narvous cow. 'Er teats is tander." When the milking was done Dan put on his well-fitting coat and they went home over Karva to the schoolhouse lane. Dan loved the things that Roddy hated: the crying of the peewits, the bleating of the sheep, the shouts of the village children when they saw him and came running to his coat pockets for sweets. He liked to tramp over the moors with the shepherds; he helped them with the dipping and shearing and the lambing. "Dan, you ought to be a farmer." "I know," he said, "that's why they stuck me in an office." IV. "If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is killed, they do not understand; for this one does not kill, nor is that one killed." Passion Week, two years after Roddy's death; Roddy's death the measure you measured time by still.