"If they truly felt the fear that came here to make its dwelling-place!" Enid Mandifer smiled sadly, as if in forgiveness of the fugitives. "But to resume; the old aunty and I made out here somehow. The war went on, but it seemed far away; and indeed it was far away. We watched the grass die before June, the leaves fall, the beauty of this place vanish."
"I am wondering about that death of grass and leaves," put in Lanark. "You connect it, somehow, with the unholiness at Fearful Rock; yet things grow there."
"Nobody is being punished there," she reminded succinctly. "Well, we had the chickens and the cow, but no crops would grow. If they had, we needed hands to farm them. Last winter aunty died, too. I buried her myself, in the back yard."
"With nobody to help you?"
"I found out that nobody cared or dared to help." Enid said that very slowly, and did not elaborate upon it. "One Negro, who lives down the road a mile, has had some mercy. When I need anything, I carry one of my gold pieces to him. He buys for me, and in a day or so I seek him out and get whatever it is. He keeps the change for his trouble."
Lanark, who had thought it cold upon the porch of the house, now mopped his brow as though it were a day in August. "You must leave here," he said.
"I have no place to go," she replied, "and if I had I would not dare."
"You would not dare?" he echoed uncomprehendingly.
"I must tell you something else. It is that my stepfather and Larue—his son—are still here."
"What do you mean? They were killed," Lanark protested. "I saw them fall. I myself examined their bodies."