Crossing quickly to the door, he peered outside and saw that someone was standing a little distance away in the shadow of the cowshed. Not his father, then-this was someone taller, straighter, younger. He could just make out the man's features, but they meant nothing to him. Someone needing work, then. In the past six months he could have hired a dozen men like this, walking the roads, footsore and hopeful. But the farm could barely keep his own family and that of one laborer, and he had come to hate turning hope into hopelessness. He put off the moment of decision.

"Looking for me?" Roper asked, then went on quickly. "Sorry, I'm attending a cow. Can it wait?"

"It can wait," the man said. "Go back to your cow."

Roper nodded and left the door ajar, out of courtesy.

Dandelion was on her feet when he got back to her stall, mouthing the hay he had put in the manger for her, looking at him with what he swore was mischief in her dark eyes. "You just wanted company, then, did you?" he said, scratching her between her horns. "Too good for the yard, that's what you are." He'd long suspected that it was true-she had been sickly in her first year and kept in the stall where she was petted and made much of, and even now preferred the barn. "All right, you can stay here the night, but I'm going to bed." He stepped back, studying her for a moment to be sure she was recovered.

One of the horses snorted, moving uneasily in his stall. And then Roper was startled by a sound just behind him. Before he could turn, something flashed before his eyes, bright in the lantern's glow, tightening around his throat before he could put up his hands to protect himself. It cut into the skin with such force he could feel blood trickling down his neck. Dandelion jerked away, moving to the back of the stall, the whites of her eyes showing her fear, but he was beyond worrying about her, fighting for his life with the breath left in him. Strong as he was, the man behind him had a fearsome strength. And then Roper was on his knees on the hard-packed earthen floor, aware that he didn't have a chance in hell. A last fleeting thought as he died was for the lantern, and a dread that it had overturned in the struggle.