In the darkness by the broken shed Sam’s mind turned from thoughts of his mother to his sister Kate and of her love affair with the young farmer. He thought with sadness of how she too had suffered because of the failings of the father, of how she had been compelled to go out of the house to wander in the dark streets to avoid the endless evenings of war talk always brought on by a guest in the McPherson household, and of the night when, getting a rig from Culvert’s livery, she had driven off alone into the country to return in triumph to pack her clothes and show her wedding ring. Before him there rose a picture of a summer afternoon when he had seen a part of the love making that had preceded this. He had gone into the store to see his sister when the young farmer came in, looked awkwardly about and pushed a new gold watch across the counter to Kate. A sudden wave of respect for his sister had pervaded the boy. “What a sum it must have cost,” he thought, and looked with new interest at the back of the lover and at the flushed cheek and shining eyes of his sister. When the lover, turning, had seen young McPherson standing at the counter, he laughed self-consciously and walked out at the door. Kate had been embarrassed and secretly pleased and flattered by the look in her brother’s eyes, but had pretended to treat the gift lightly, twirling it carelessly back and forth on the counter and walking up and down swinging her arms. “Don’t go telling,” she had said. “Then don’t go pretending,” the boy had answered. Sam thought that his sister’s indiscretion, which had brought her a babe and a husband in the same month had, after all, ended better than the indiscretion of his mother in her marriage with Windy. Rousing himself, he went into the house. A neighbour woman, employed for the purpose, had prepared the evening meal and now began complaining of his lateness, saying that the food had got cold. Sam ate in silence. While he ate the woman went out of the house and presently returned, bringing a daughter. There was in Caxton a code that would not allow a woman to be alone in a house with a man. Sam wondered if the bringing of the daughter was an attempt on the part of the woman to abide by the letter of the code, if she thought of the sick woman in the house as one already gone. The thought amused and saddened him. “You would have thought her safe,” he mused. She was fifty, small, nervous and worn and wore a set of ill-fitting false teeth that rattled as she talked. When she did not talk she rattled them with her tongue because of nervousness. In at the kitchen door came Windy, far gone in drink. He stood by the door holding to the knob with his hand and trying to get control of himself. “My wife--my wife is dying. She may die any day,” he wailed, tears standing in his eyes.