So for a minute they stood, the horse's head drooping beside his shoulder, the woman upon the roadside erect, passionate; around them the leafless wood through which the long straight road was cut.

The long level red beams of the sun struck through between the gray trunks, burnishing the wet carpet of the fallen leaf.
"Did you think it was I who fired ?" he asked.
Then he went on with the horse, and she at the side.
She was utterly astonished.

"Who, Ephraim--who fired ?" He looked straight in front of him again.

"It was my mother.

She brandished the gun in his face.