“Yes?”

“I think your daughter needs help.”

Darcy remained where he stood, and Wally burst into a sprint out of the cowshed when he saw that the father would not move. Wally ran across a cowchipped field, at the opposite end of which Sally was entering a wood by means of a trail that Wally knew led to the brook forming the northern boundary of the Darcy property.

Wally found the object of his pursuit sitting on a boulder above the flowing water of the brook, sobbing, rocking, and clutching her sides out of either grief or out of pain from the cold that was quickly settling over the valley. Wally approached slowly, and from an angle that afforded the girl a view of his approach with a wool coat held wide in both hands.

Sally said not a word as Wally stooped over to lay the coat about her shoulders, and only pulled the garment close about her body as he stood erect above and away. “It’s not fair. The last day of the war! It’s not fair!” Her last sentence was almost a shriek across the stream.

“I’m sorry, Sally. If there’s anything I can do—”

“Hold me.”

“I—”

“You can hold me. That’s what you can do.” Sally’s rocking was now a gentle slight swaying above the water.

Wally hesitantly lowered himself to the surface of the boulder, swung his legs over its edge to take a position beside the girl, and put one arm around her as she leaned onto his shoulder and cried some more.

Wally watched the burbling waters of the brook with resigned patience as the tears on his shoulder gradually subsided along with the light of day.