Sam spends three nights at the Spillkill stream grieving for Frightful and practicing with his sling, which proves to be quite difficult to use accurately. When Sam returns to his home, his friend Bando comes to visit, announcing himself with his usual greeting, “Hall-oo, the tree! Hall-oo, the house!” (33). Bando is an English professor who visited Sam often during his first year on the mountain and loved the area so much that he bought a cabin two miles from Sam’s camp and moved there with his new bride, Zella, who is a lawyer. Zella does not love the rustic cabin life as much as Bando, but she tolerates it. Bando’s arrival makes Sam realize that he hasn’t seen Alice since he returned, and he wonders where she might be.

Bando wants to borrow Sam’s water mill to create supplies and replace his Adirondack furniture, since he recently sold several pieces to a man who offered to buy them at such a high price that Bando could not refuse. Sam starts up the water mill and reflects on a request Alice made last fall that they use the mill to generate electricity.