e left the seminary in a temper and struck out walking for home. His anger had swallowed his reason. He was wearing tight shoes with hard soles that were worn down unevenly because he had a funny way of walking, a bit bandy-legged. He walked for a whole day and night until he came to the last of his strength and he used that to climb over a gate into a field and across to the bank of a narrow river and he lay down there beneath a willow tree.
He was stretched snoring when she found him, the flesh around his ankles swollen out over the tops of his shoes, his socks matted with blood and pus, his trouser-legs ribboned and caked. His upper half looked more respectable; his jacket and hat were well-worn but of fine quality. He roared when she woke him. She jumped back in fear, then saw that he was barely a man, and that he was frightened.
She walked him slowly along the river bank and over a small wooden bridge and along a path of packed dirt to the back gate of her house. She sat him at a broad table in the kitchen on a high-backed chair and she worked his shoes off his feet slowly, but for all her gentleness he almost passed out from the pain. Tears fell from his eyes; he wiped them quickly away. There was darkness at the sides of his vision, drawing in.
She was kneeling, tutting, cutting his socks away with scissors. Her hair was tied up but the pin was coming loose. Time was moving slowly forward, liquidly it seemed to him. She was wearing men’s trousers and boots and a tweed jacket. She had a pan of water and a glass bottle of some kind of ointment, set on the edge of the hearthstone before the open fire. He tried to straighten himself but he fell forward.
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