Glendora dropped a chicken and a flurry of feathers, and went with her through the drizzle, to the storehouse. Sarah found the right key and unlocked the door.

It was a long, low room, like a root cellar, for it was banked up with soil, and vines had run rampant over that, too. It was dark but dry and cool. She doled out what Glendora vaguely guessed were the right amounts of dried peas, eggs, cornmeal, a little salt. The shelves looked emptier than when Miss Celie had shown her the storeroom, and since the men from the Commissary had called; there were certainly now fewer mouths to feed but there was less to feed them with. She took Glendora to the smokehouse, unlocked it and saw with satisfaction there was still a quantity of hams and sides of bacon, hanging from the smoke stained rafters.

They wouldn't go hungry, not yet. And the fields were green and growing. ``Can't you possibly imagine what life is going to be like, here?'' Maude had said.

Maude.

She sent Glendora back to the house, her basket and her apron laden. She stood for a moment, rain dripping from the trees over her head, thinking of Maude.

Maude had the opportunity to take the bottle of opium from Sarah's room. Maude had the cool ruthlessness to do whatever she made up her mind to do. She couldn't see how her death could affect Maude. She couldn't see any reason why Maude would attempt to frighten her. Besides, there was something hysterical and silly, something almost childish about an attempt to frighten her. Maude was neither hysterical nor silly and Sarah rather doubted if she had ever been childish.