Hally then arrives home from school, and cheerfully asks if the two are ready for the competition. Sam is the unacknowledged yet de facto mentor to the boy since childhood, and has always treated Hally as his nephew/ward. Sam hopes to skillfully guide Hally through the difficult passage from childhood into manhood. And hopefully thereby, takes up those values and viewpoints of an adult; and a man, that Sam, has over the years lain down; and, that all men try to leave as their legacy of shepherding an adolescent boy into manhood. Willie, for his part, has always played the "loyal black"; who has always called the white Afrikaner boy (now young man) "Master Harold"; As if, as a man of forty-five, he was addressing a superior; even when Hally was six.