The old woman tells Bryce, the little boy, to stop looking up at Edward because she’s not “paying [him] to stand and stare” (123). Edward spends the day hanging by his ears from the pole in the woman’s garden, watching Bryce and the old woman work. Edward wonders what it would be like to have wings like the crows that are constantly cawing in his ears. He thinks that if he had wings, he would have been able to escape the bad situations that had befallen him.

Dusk comes, and a “whippoorwill sang out over and over again. Whip poor Will. Whip poor Will. It was the saddest sound Edward had ever heard. And then came another song, the hum of a harmonica” (125). It’s Bryce. Edward is taken down but thinks: “I am nothing but a hollow rabbit. Too late […] I am only a doll made of china” (126). However, once he’s taken off the pole and falls into the boy’s arms, he feels relief and joy and thinks perhaps “it is not too late, after all, to be saved” (126).