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leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and watched the yellow-eyed dog strain against his collar.
    “ Meow. Meeeow .” She cupped her hands over her mouth to make the sound carry. The dog went into a frenzy of barking, hurling himself against his collar until the tendons in his neck stood out against his hide and his eyes bulged. Laughing, Sarah crawled farther up into the hay.
    A rope hung from the center beam, a half-dozen mud nests having been destroyed to make room for its thick coils. Taking hold of the rope, she yanked on it. It held, and lifting her feet from the haystack, she clamped it tight between her legs and shinnied up. She reached the beam and grasped it with both hands, but still moved against the rope as though she were climbing, enjoying the warm, tingling sensation between her thighs.
    “Sar-ee.” The high voice ricocheted through the rafters. Sarah looked over her shoulder so abruptly that she nearly lost her grip on the beam, her face burning with embarrassment. Gracie stood in the retreating square of sunshine on the barn floor, peering up into the gloom, her little round fists planted importantly where her hips would one day be. “What’re you doing up there?”
    “How long have you been here, you little sneak?” Sarah snapped. She slid down the rope so fast that she burned her hands. “Why don’t you just go away and leave me be? You’re always creeping around.”
    “Am not!”
    Sam stepped into the light beside the small defiant figure of sister Grace. “Here now. What’s the row about?”
    “Nothing, Mr. Ebbitt.” Sarah blew gently on her hands.
    “Sarah was climbing the rope and messing with the swallows’ nests.” Gracie pointed an accusing finger at the broken teeth of mud.
    Sam turned his eyes on Sarah. “Don’t you be climbing thatanymore. You could fall and hurt yourself. Come on down off of there. Wagon’s hitched, it’s time we were going.” Sarah slid off the haystack and shook out her skirts. Sam eyed her ankles. “That dress’s a mite shorter than’s proper. How old’re you, Sarah Mary?”
    “Fifteen.”
    “Shorter than’s proper. Get your mam to let it out.”
    Sarah looked at the ground, crouching a bit to make the skirt reach the top of her boots. “Hem’s down,” she murmured.
    “Speak up now. I can’t hear you.”
    “Hem is down!” she burst out.
    Sam nodded slowly and worked his jaws. “Well,” he said finally, “day’s not getting any longer.” He led the way to the wagon.
    It was huge, with a bed seventeen feet long and hemmed in on three sides with one-by-twelve-inch planks; a team of six draft horses stood stolidly in the traces. Each year Sam donated it for the hayride. He had pitched a great mound of loose hay into the shallow box, piling it higher than the driver’s seat. Wisps poked out between the planks and scattered over a heavy fur lap robe that took up half the seat. Gracie pulled herself onto the wagon and settled in the remaining space.
    “Punkin, why don’t you ride back there in the hay and let your sister ride up front with me?” Sam climbed up beside her and unwound the reins from the post, stringing the leads deftly through his thick fingers.
    “I want to ride with you,” Gracie pleaded. “Why can’t Sare ride in the hay? She’s all over straw already.”
    “Sarah’s older’n you, that’s why,” Sam said. Gracie threw herself sullenly into the hay inches behind the wagon seat. “Don’t lay there right on top of us, move on back and let us talk a bit.” He jerked his thumb toward the far end of the wagon bed. Grace moved back another eighteen inches.
    Sam handed the older girl up. Uncomfortable with the attention, Sarah sat hunched against the robe on the far side of the seat. He shook the reins and the wagon lumbered away from the farm, back down the track toward the Tolstonadges’ and the town.
    The sun was partway down the western sky, burning the edges of Sam’s beard and throwing long