"She just looked like somebody that has quit sleeping at night."
This is what Bayard describes as both her cousin Drusilla and Granny. When he visits his aunt's home after his home was burned by Union soldiers, Drusilla tells him and Ringo stories about how the railroad was gone and how every night the sound of slaves going to what they think is freedom can be heard. Cousin Drusilla lost her fiancée in the war and is now looking for a way to go to the battle herself, just like a man. Bayard describes his cousin looking not ill, but like she has stopped sleeping completely. He uses the same description for Granny when Granny gets into business of reselling the mules.
"There is a limit to what a child can accept, assimilate; not to what it can believe because a child can believe anything, given time, but to what it can accept, a limit in time, in the very time which nourishes the believing of the incredible."
After Bayard and Ringo abandon Granny they get discovered by Colonel Sartoris. In the midst of their road to find Granny the stumble upon Union soldiers. Bayard and Ringo, only two boys at the time who not long ago played outside in the mud, get involved in the action of Confederate soldiers capturing the Union soldiers. Bayard, as a young child would, gets overwhelmed and the reality of the action seems unreal to him.
"...I had for some time known I was becoming and had feared the test of it; I remember how I thought while her hands still rested on my shoulders: At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were."
Bayard gets news of his father's death. Ringo comes to Mr. Wilkins' place where he's staying to bring him home. Mrs. Wilkins reminds Bayard of Granny. On his departure he lies to this woman, which is what Granny taught him not to do and made him ritualistically wash his mouth with soap after. The thing that Bayard fears that he's becoming is like his father, a killer with purpose and revenge; he did kill Grumby out of revenge when he was a boy. He knows that the main reason he is going back home is not only to be there for his father's funeral but to avenge him. He thinks, or hopes, that he is not like his father and that he will do the right thing, which, as we see at the end is stopping the blood revenge.
