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It was supper time. Moments since the kitchen bell had been ringing, rocking under its cupola on the kitchen roof. His father, his brother and the hired man, fertilizing the grain field beyond the shoulder of the hill, would have heard it and be promptly on their way. After drawing on his faded coat, he picked up a pair of pliers from the ground and shoved them into the hip pocket of his overalls. He shouldered his axe and saw, then started.

The long marsh was separated from his father’s farm by the Beulah road, a narrow clay highway curving past the head of the swamp toward the village of Beulah. In the opposite direction, it ran on eventually to the town of Lockwood on the bank of the St. Lawrence. The Bard farmhouse, a prosperous red brick structure, faced the road and the swamp, presenting a stone fence of dry masonry, and within the fence an apple-orchard. At one side a lane, guarded by a board gate, led in from the road.

As Mauney swung up the lane toward the farmyard the crisp snap of a whip was borne to his ears from below the shoulder of the grain-field, followed by a man’s call to his horses: