"Thot's t' road, thot's t' road. Yo're the foorst straanger she a' let milk 'er. She's a narvous cow. 'Er teats is tander."
When the milking was done Dan put on his well-fitting coat and they went home over Karva to the schoolhouse lane.
Dan loved the things that Roddy hated: the crying of the peewits, the bleating of the sheep, the shouts of the village children when they saw him and came running to his coat pockets for sweets. He liked to tramp over the moors with the shepherds; he helped them with the dipping and shearing and the lambing.
"Dan, you ought to be a farmer."
"I know," he said, "that's why they stuck me in an office."
IV.
"If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is killed, they do not understand; for this one does not kill, nor is that one killed."
Passion Week, two years after Roddy's death; Roddy's death the measure you measured time by still.
Mamma looked up from her Bible; she looked over her glasses with eyes tired of their everlasting reproach.
"What have you got there, Mary?"