The poem
He opens the scullery door, and a sudden rush of wind, as raw as raw, brushes past him as he himself will brush past the stacks of straw
that stood in earlier for Crow or Comanche tepees hung with scalps but tonight past muster, row upon row, for the foothills of the Alps.
He opens the door of the peeling-shed just as one of the apple-peelers (one of almost a score of red-cheeked men who pare
and core the red-cheeked apples for a few spare shillings) mutters something about "bloodshed" and the "peelers."
The red-cheeked men put down their knives at one and the same moment. All but his father, who somehow connives to close one eye as if taking aim
or holding back a tear, and shoots him a glance he might take, as it whizzes past his ear, for a Crow, or a Comanche, lance
hurled through the Tilley-lit gloom of the peeling-shed, when he hears what must be an apple split above his head.