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Prayers were over. Mrs. Oakley rose from her knees; Joshua prodded the ashes in his pipe; Josiah drew a twist of home-cured tobacco from his pocket, and cutting off a chew from the end of it, thrust it into his cheek, where it bulged for the rest of the evening; Rufus picked up a fishing pole and resumed his whittling. Until bedtime the three men would sprawl there in the agreeable warmth between the fireplace and the lamp on the table. Nobody talked; conversation was as alien to them as music. Drugged with fatigue, they nodded in a vegetable somnolence. Even in their hours of freedom they could not escape the relentless tyranny of the soil.

After putting away the Bible, Mrs. Oakley took out a dozen damask towels, with Turkey red borders and fringed ends, from her top bureau drawer and began to look over then. These towels were the possession she prized most, after the furniture of her grandfather, and they were never used except when the minister or a visiting elder came to spend the night.