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drew the armchair to the side of the bed and sat down, her elbows leaning on the bed, her chin on her clenched hands. “Tell me,” she said.
    “You can’t imagine—” he began.
    “I know I can’t, so tell me—” she repeated.
    “A poor dreary village—in the forests—in the morning—the sun would never come up. I used to wait for it—and then when it came it poured down so hot that you longed for night again, and when it went down it went down as though it had dropped into a well and all the mosquitoes and flies sprang at you like tigers out of the dark—”
    “I know,” she whispered, “I was born in Georgia.”
    “You know, all those forests—we could have built ourselves houses. The Confederate government owned all the sawmills—you know that? They could have put up houses for us—but we lived in holes and tents and there was a big pen—”
    He pushed up his sleeve and showed her his bone-thin arms. They were covered with scars. “Burned,” he said, “they burned us with pine sticks lit into coals at the end. What did they do that for?”
    “Men do such things,” she said. “I’ve seen men hang another man and burn him before he died.”
    “But we were all white men,” Tom said.
    “It doesn’t matter, white or black, when the feel for it gets in them. Happens to black more often because the black men are in the white men’s power. But I reckon when white men get under the power, the same things are done to them.”
    “I couldn’t save myself,” Tom went on as though he had not heard her. “I used to curse and swear and rave and hit at them. After a while you learn better. You just look down at the ground and don’t even mumble. You just take it, whatever it is—think about something else if you can—but you take it.”
    “I know,” Bettina said, “how I know!”
    The room was full of peace and stillness. Years ago some ancestor had paneled it in white wood, and had set into the space above the mantel piece the portrait of a young girl, young as spring in her white and green gown. Her hair was the color of daffodils, but she held a gold cross in her hand. Why did a white girl hold a cross? What did she know about the meaning of a cross?
    “You’ve never been a prisoner,” Tom said restlessly. “You can’t know.”
    “I know how it feels to have to take things,” she answered. “I know how it feels to be helpless.”
    He came out of his absorption in his own misery enough to look at her with faint curiosity. “Nobody is mean to you here—in our house.”
    “I lived, a long time enough before I came here,” she said, sighing.
    But his curiosity could not reach beyond himself today. His own body was still his chief concern. “How my back hurts me!” he muttered.
    “Turn yourself over, sir. Turn over and I’ll rub you well.”
    He turned himself painfully, groaning, and she helped him, half lifting him. Her slender arms were unexpectedly strong and he felt them so.
    “You’ve got strength,” he murmured into his pillow.
    “I’ve got to have strength,” she replied. She began to rub his back as she spoke, and the strokes of her hands were long and strong. He yielded himself to their comfort.
    The lands of Malvern lay across a wide shallow valley and over two ranges of hills. Riding until noon Pierce had cut diagonally across from the northeast corner to southwest. Not too many of the fields were fallow, but the war had forced idleness on the land. With Tom and himself both away he could not expect to see the land looking as it should. But it was there and it still belonged to him. He was stripped and penniless, as every man on the Southern side was, but he could borrow for seed, and he knew his land. Give him a year, and it would be pouring out its gold again. Labor he would get somehow, for whatever pay. He wanted only to look ahead.
    At the southwest corner Malvern joined its fields to that of his nearest neighbor, John MacBain. Pierce held his horse just short