Cirrus@Austlit

The narrator recalls an old guilty memory while meditating, and resolves to expose it. As a child, the narrator often played with their uncle, Harry, who had Down syndrome; their mother died in childbirth, leaving Aunty to raise them on their grandparents' farm. Mrs B's son, Andrew, was maimed during the war, leaving him one-armed. He also started to accompany Harry and the narrator.

Harry loved foxes and kept close watch on a fox den in the dam wall. However, one day Andrew comes to kill the foxes; the narrator shouts a warning to Harry at the last minute. Harry accidentally shoots Andrew dead in the struggle. When Aunty arrives at the scene and learns what happened from the narrator, Aunty kills Harry before disguising the scene as a murder-suicide, claiming it would be kinder to Harry.

In the present, after Aunty's death, the narrator is determined to let Mrs B know her son was not a murderer.