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days later, when they got home from Dan's funeral, she thought on going into the kitchen that it smelled stale. Jerry was outside putting up the horses. She set the baby in the rocking chair and started to make a fire. A puff of acrid wood smoke blowing into her nose seemed all at once to have an intensely disgusting smell. She gripped the corner of the table to steady herself and her features contracted into an expression of mingled rage and horror. She knew that she was with child again.

Wednesday of the following week was hog-killing day for Jerry. Joe Barnaby came over to help him butcher. From the kitchen window Judith could see the men going about getting things in readiness, putting up three sets of crossed poles from which to hang the carcasses, arranging a scraping table, setting up the scalding barrel at a convenient angle and building a fire under a large, flaring iron kettle. It was a gray, frosty morning and they had their caps pulled down over their ears. Their breath came in white puffs.

Inside she had a roaring fire and the wash boiler on the stove to make more scalding water; for the hog-killing kettle that they had borrowed was not a very large one.

"There hain't no day I like better'n hog-killin' day," said Joe, warming his hands over the fire while they waited for the water to heat. "Some folks hates to see butcherin' day come. But I say to dress a hawg clean an' neat is as nice a job as there is a-goin'; an' it's a job a man kin put some heart into, 'cause he knows he hain't throwin' his work away. More'n that, he's got company by his side, an' that means a hull lot."

Joe's long, melancholy face showed its nearest approach to satisfaction, as he went out with Jerry, who had the sharpened butcher knife in his hand.

Judith stood over the wash tub rubbing out children's