They had met again when the survey had been made, sitting again in the light that fell through the old curtains, and their discontents had now been adjusted or hidden. The surveyor had made a plat for each one, a shield of irregular shape drawn on paper, representing lands, arable acres and woodlands. The plows of the spring would slip through the fields and the inheritors would be about their business, belonging now, each one, to his land. But the substance of the myth would fade out from under them. Some of them were dead, and from some the land had melted away. Owners were separated from their ownership. Memoranda of deeds began to tell their tales, items of barter. “Beginning at a stone at the east edge of the Quincy pike, corner to lot 4, thence with edge of said pike south 88½ west 32 poles 23 links, thence south.... Said farm known as Linden Hill....” It was accurately described, line for line. In the house someone was born, the birth told in a letter from Charlotte, the mother, to Anthony. Another paper, notes drawn up for the writing of some deed, “witnesseth that said Anthony, for and in consideration of the sum of nineteen thousand dollars to him paid by said Goodwin ... hath given, granted, bargained, sold, transferred, and released, and by these presents does give, grant, bargain, sell, transfer, and release unto said Goodwin, a certain tract of land situated, lying, and being in the county aforesaid on the south side of the Casey Run and bounded as follows: Beginning at a stone ... thence with edge of said pike south 88½ west 32 poles 23 links ... said farm known as Linden Hill.” The road ran between the farms, mapped and charted, and the farms were charted and recorded, described and owned, bounded by fences and walls and watercourses, these men belonging to the land as owners of land. But the land was gone, cut from under their feet, in consideration of the sum of nineteen thousand dollars, it was released, bargained, granted, given, sold, transferred. The day of the sale had been a bright day in June. The tillers of the soil had already planted the tobacco and the corn in the arable fields. The child born had been herself. A letter told of the humid noon, dinner on long tables before the house door, the half of a mutton roasted by three negroes over a great wood fire, piles of bread, drink for the men in the barn, whisky poured into little glasses. She had been a baby above-stairs in a cradle. It was all now a mouldy smell on rotting paper, a faint stench and a choking dust. An imperfect chronicle arose out of the stench and this chronicle built the present into a new structure. She sat staring at the embers or she turned again to the documents, for they had hints of more to disclose.