Alone in the rain, Helen walks through the pastures of her family’s farm. She walks until the rain lessens, then watches the light in the barn dance across the soil where she stands. As night emerges, Helen unsticks her feet from the mud and trudges to the barn, where a young farmhand is milking the cows. Outside, she listens to him talk and sing to the animals, but her mother soon finds her. She asks her daughter where she has been, berating her for wandering off. Helen objects, saying she is otherwise a well-behaved girl who is no more sinful than any man naturally is. Her mother still disapproves and tells her to stay away from the barn while the farmhand is there. Her mother claims every man who has been on the farm wants their way with Helen, including Helen’s father. Helen protests, saying her father was a good man and that her mother sent him away for no reason. Unrelenting, her mother tells her it would be good to tell the farmhand there is no purpose in his continued presence at the farm. Helen confesses that she had evil thoughts tonight, then asks her mother if God really is as hard on sinners as her mother claims. Her mother confirms that He is, then leads Helen to their house so she can dry off. After Helen observes how strange the house is without her father, her mother tells her she needs to pray more. Helen tells her mother she will pray in the barn alone, then leaves the house. She hears the farmhand working in the milkhouse and walks towards him, then asks him for a drink of the fresh milk from the separator machine. He gives her a cup and watches her drink. Once she finishes, he tells her he was unaware there were pretty girls in the countryside. Panicked, Helen drops the cup and races away from the farmhand, climbing up to the barn’s loft. She lays there until she calms down, then sees the trapdoor opening. Just as the boy’s head emerges, she jumps for the door, slamming it closed and causing him to fall off the ladder. Frozen with fear, shock, and adrenaline, Helen prays, asking God for forgiveness for her evil thoughts and thanking Him for delivering her from evil. When she finally comes down from the loft, she finds the boy’s neck is bent at an odd angle. In curiosity, Helen touches the boy’s hair, then his chest. She finds he has no pulse. She rearranges his body, straightening it amongst the hay. She crosses his hands over his chest and places a few straws of hay into them. Helen then steps out into the rain again, twisting a bit of hay she took from the barn and letting the falling droplets soak the breaking fibers.