"Supper last night."

"I've got beans simmering in that kettle," Kephart said. "That's about all I have but you're welcome to it."

"Beans is fine."

He filled a bowl and placed it on the table with a tin of cornbread.

"You partial to sweet milk or buttermilk?"

"Buttermilk would be my rathering," Rachel said.

Kephart took two pint jelly glasses outside. He came back with one brimmed with buttermilk, the other sweet milk.

"I figure that chap will be hungry again before too long," he said. "I got another pot to put on the fire if you want to warm him a bottle."

"That's alright. He's learned to drink it cold."

"Get your bottle then. I'll pour this in and set it in the springhouse so it'll be ready when he wakes up. Got some graham crackers too if he wants something to nibble."

Rachel did what he suggested, knowing he'd done these things before, maybe a long time ago, but sometime. She wondered where his wife and children were and almost asked.

"Have a seat," Kephart said, and nodded at the table's one chair.

Rachel looked around the room. Another chair and table were in the corner opposite the hearth. On the table was one of the room's oil lamps, beside it paper and a typewriter, the words REMINGTON STANDARD stamped in white beneath the keys. A mason jar filled with a clear liquid was also on the table. The lid lay beside the jar.

While she ate, Kephart took Jacob's bottle to the springhouse. Rachel was ravenous and ate every bean in the bowl. Kephart refilled her jelly jar and she drank half, then crumbled a square of cornbread in it. It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you'd eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did.

When Rachel finished, she went out to the creek with the bowl and spoon. She laid them on the mossy bank and went into the woods to squat. She came back to the creek and cleaned the bowl and spoon with water and sand and brought them inside. Jacob was awake, clutching the bottle to his mouth. Kephart sat on the bed beside the child.

"He wasn't of a mind to wait for you, so I figured I'd oblige him."

Kephart lingered a few moments longer and then went outside. When Jacob finished the bottle, Rachel burped him and changed his swaddlings. The room felt cozy, but it didn't seem right to be in the cabin without Kephart there, so she took Jacob outside. Rachel sat on the lowest porch step and placed the child on the grass. Kephart came and perched on the top step. Rachel tried to think of something to make conversation, hoping it'd take at least some of her thinking off Widow Jenkins, them that would do the same to her and Jacob.

"You live here all the time?" Rachel asked.

"No, I got a place in Bryson City," Kephart answered. "I come out here when I'm tired of being around people."

He hadn't said the words in a mean sort of way, the way he would have if he meant to make her feel bad, but they made Rachel feel even more like a bother. Half an hour passed and they didn't speak again. Then Jacob began to fuss. Rachel checked his swaddlings and set him on her lap, but he continued to whine.

"I got something in the shed I bet he'll like," Kephart said.

Rachel followed him behind the cabin. He opened the shed door. Inside two fox kits nestled against each other on a bed of straw.

"Something got their mama. There was another one, but it was too weak to live."

The kits rose, mewing as they came to Kephart, who scratched them behind their ears as he might pups.

"How do you feed them?" Rachel asked.

"Table scraps now. The first few days cow milk in a medicine dropper."

Jacob reached out his hand toward the kits, and Rachel stepped inside, kneeled as she held Jacob by the waist.

"Pet them soft, Jacob," Rachel said, and took the child's hand and brushed it over one of the kit's fur.

The other kit nudged closer, pressed its black nose against Jacob's hand as well.

"It's about time for them to go out and fend for themselves," Kephart said.

"They look fat and sassy enough," Rachel said. "You look to have been a good parent."

"It'd be the first time," Kephart said.

After a while, Rachel and Jacob went back to the front steps and watched as the afternoon settled into the gorge. It was the kind of early fall day Rachel had always loved, not warm or cold, the sky all deep-blue and cloudless and no breeze, the crops proud and ripe and the leaves so pretty but hardly a one yet fallen-a day so perfect that the earth itself seemed sorry to let it pass, so slowed down its roll into evening and let it linger. Rachel tried to lose herself in that, let it clear her mind, and for a few minutes she could. But then she'd think of Widow Jenkins, and she could just as well have been sitting in a hailstorm for the comfort the day gave her.

Soon shadows splotched the yard and began to spread. The air cooled and a breeze stirred the higher branches. In that breeze Rachel felt a tinge of the cold weather coming. Kephart went back into the cabin, and the typewriter's rat-tat-tat began. A few minutes later, as if in reply, the yellowhammer found a closer tree to peck. The typewriter's sound seemed to soothe Jacob, because he soon crawled into Rachel's lap and napped.

IT was early evening when Rachel heard footsteps coming up the path. The sheriff stepped into the clearing, a cardboard container slightly smaller and shallower than a cigar box in his right hand.

"Something for him when he gets fussy," the sheriff said, handing the container to Rachel. "Got them from Scott at the general store."

She set the container between her and Jacob, the contents shifting and rattling inside. Rachel lifted the lid and found it held marbles.

"Scott said there's cat eyes and solids and swirls. Some steel shooters in there too."

Kephart, who'd come out on the porch, shook his head and smiled.

"What?" McDowell asked.

"They're usually not shooting marbles till they're a tad older."

The sheriff's face reddened.

"Well, I guess he can grow into them."

"Look here, Jacob," Rachel said, and lifted the box slightly so marbles rolled and clacked. The child placed his hand inside, lifted as many as he could hold and let them drop back in. He picked up more, dropped them as well. Rachel watched to make sure he didn't put one in his mouth.

"We'd better go," Sheriff McDowell said, and stepped onto Kephart's porch to get the carpetbag.

"Just a moment," Kephart said, and disappeared into the cabin, came back with a gray wool sock. "There's only one thing for a boy to keep his marbles in, and that's a sock."

Kephart kneeled beside Jacob, the sock soon bulging with marbles. He knotted the sock above the heel.

"There. Now they'll not be spilling out like they would in that cardboard."

Rachel took the sock, its heft more than she'd imagined, at least a pound. She lifted Jacob with one arm and handed the sock to the child, who clutched it like a poppit-doll.

"Thank you for letting them stay here," Sheriff McDowell said.

"Yes, thank you," Rachel said. "It was a considerable kindness."

Kephart nodded.

They walked out of the yard and down the path. Rachel glanced back and saw Kephart watched from the porch, the mason jar now in his hand. He raised it slowly to his lips.

"Where's Mr. Kephart from?" Rachel asked once they had entered the woods.

"The midwest," Sheriff McDowell said. "Saint Louis."

When they got to the trail end, the police car had been replaced by a Model T Ford.

"This car will be less conspicuous," the sheriff said.

"I ain't got clothes and swaddlings but for two days," Rachel said as they drove out of the gorge. "Can we go by my cabin?"