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"There's a camp for girls

On Bellows Lake.

Camp Massasoit’s

Its name.

From the rise of sun

Till the day is done,

There is lots of fun

Down there..."

The voices were shrill, bright, and trusting. Then the changing wind extinguished the song and blew some wood smoke down along the slate roof to where the three people sat. There was a rumble of thunder.

"I never hear thunder," Mrs. Garrison said, "without recalling that Enid Clark was struck dead by lightning."

"Who was she?" Ellen said.

"She was an extraordinarily disagreeable woman," Mrs. Garrison said. "She took a bath in front of an open window one afternoon and was struck dead by lightning. Her husband had wrangled with the bishop, so she wasn't buried from the cathedral. They set her up beside the swimming pool and had the funeral service there, and there wasn't anything to drink. We drove back to New York after the ceremony and your father stopped along the way at a bootlegger's and bought a case of Scotch. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a football game and a lot of traffic outside Princeton. We had that French-Canadian chauffeur, and his driving had always made me nervous. I spoke to Ralph about it and he said I was a fool, and five minutes later the car was upside down. I was thrown out of the open window into a stony field, and the first thing your father did was to look into the luggage compartment to see what had happened to the Scotch. There I was, bleeding to death, and he was counting bottles."

Mrs. Garrison arranged a steamer rug over her legs and looked narrowly at the lake and the mountains. The noise of footsteps on the gravel drive alarmed her. Guests? She turned and saw that it was Nils Lund. He left the driveway for the lawn and came across the grass toward the terrace, shuffling in shoes that were too big for him. His cowlick, his short, faded hair, his spare figure, and the line of his shoulders reminded Jim of a boy. It was as if Nils's growth, his spirit, had been stopped in some summer of his youth, but he moved wearily and without spirit, like a brokenhearted old man. He came to the foot of the terrace and spoke to Mrs. Garrison without looking at her. "I no move the lilies, Mrs. Garrison."

"What, Nils?" she asked, and leaned forward.

"I no move the lilies."

"Why not?"

"I got too much to do." He looked at her and spoke angrily. "All winter I'm here alone. There's snow up to my neck. The wind screams so, I can't sleep. I work for you seventeen years and you never been here once in the bad weather."

"What has the winter got to do with the lilies, Nils?" she asked calmly.

"I got too much to do. Move the lilies. Move the roses. Cut the grass. Every day you want something different. Why is it? Why are you better than me? You don't know how to do anything but kill flowers. I grow the flowers. You kill them. If a fuse burns out, you don't know how to do it. If something leaks, you don't know how to do it. You kill flowers. That's all you know how to do. For seventeen years I wait for you all winter," he shouted. "You write me, 'Is it warm? Are the flowers pretty?' Then you come. You sit here. You drink. God damn you people. You killed my wife. Now you want to kill me. You—"

"Shut up, Nils," Jim said.

Nils turned quickly and retreated across the lawn, so stricken with self-consciousness that he seemed to limp. None of them spoke, for they had the feeling, after he had disappeared behind the hedge, that he might be hiding there, waiting to hear what they would say. Then Ingrid and Greta came up the lawn from their evening walk, overburdened with the stones and wild flowers that they brought back from these excursions to decorate their rooms above the garage. Greta told Jim that something was caught in a trap in the corn patch. She thought it was a cat.

Jim got the rifle and a flashlight and went up the hill to the gardens. As he approached the corn patch, he could hear a wild, thin crying. Then the animal, whatever it was, began to pound the dirt. The stroke was strong, as regular