“No need to yell at the boy, Alvin. He's only seven.”

“Seven's old enough to keep his mouth shut and leave grown-ups alone when we've got things to– look at that.”

“I can hardly believe it.”

“I thought to see pus coming out like cream from a cow's tit.”

“Clean as can be.”

“And skin growing back, will you look at that? Your sewing must've took.”

“I hardly dared to hope that skin would live.”

“Can't even see no bone under there.”

“The Lord is blessing us. I prayed all night, Alvin, and look what God has done.”

“Well, you should've prayed harder, then, and got it healed up tight. I need this boy for chores.”

“Don't you get blasphemous with me, Alvin Miller.”

“It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit. Maybe Alvin's just a good healer, you ever think of that?”

“Look, your nastiness is waking the boy.”

“See if he wants a drink of water.”

“He's getting one whether he wants it or not.”

Alvin wanted it badly. His body was dry, not just his mouth; it needed to make back what it lost in blood. So he swallowed as much as he could, from a tin cup held to his mouth. A lot of it spilled around his face and neck but he didn't hardly notice that. It was the water that trickled into his belly that mattered. He lay back and tried to find out from the inside how his wound was doing. But it was too hard to get back there, too hard to concentrate. He dropped off before he was halfway there.

He woke again, and thought it must be night again, or maybe the curtains were drawn. He couldn't find out cause it was too hard to open his eyes, and the pain was back, fierce again, and something maybe even worse: the wound was a-tickling till he could hardly keep himself from reaching down to scratch. After a while, though, he was able to find the wound and once again help the layers to grow. By the time he slept, there was a thin, complete layer of skin over the whole wound. Underneath, the body was still working to renew the ravaged muscles and knit the broken bones. But there'd be no more loss of blood, no more open wound to get infected.

“Look at this, Taleswapper. You ever seen the like of this?”

“Skin like a newborn baby.”

“Maybe I'm crazy, but except for the splint I can't see no reason to leave this leg bound up no more.”

“Not a sign of a wound. No, you're right, there's no need for a bandage now.”

“Maybe my wife is right, Taleswapper. Maybe God just rared back and passed a miracle on my boy.”

“Can't prove anything. When the boy wakes up, maybe he'll know something about it.”

“Not a chance of that. He hasn't even opened his eyes this whole time.”

“One thing's certain, Mr. Miller. The boy isn't about to die. That's more than I could have guessed yesterday.”

“I was set to build him a box to hold him underground, that I was. I didn't see no chance him living. Will you look at how healthy he is? I want to know what's protecting him, or who.”

“Whatever is protecting him, Mr. Miller, the boy is stronger. That's something to think about. His protector split that stone, but Al Junior put it back together and not a thing his protector could do about it.”

“Reckon he even knew what he was doing?”

“He must have some notion of his powers. He knew what he could do with the stone.”

“I never heard of a knack like this, to tell you straight. I told Faith what he did with that stone, dressing it on the backside without ever laying on a tool, and she starts reading from the Book of Daniel and crying about fulfilment of the prophecy. Wanted to rush in here and warn the boy about clay feet. Don't that beat all? Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn't crazy with religion.”

The door opened.

“Get out of here! Are you so dumb I have to tell you twenty times, Cally? Where's his mother, can't she keep one seven-year-old boy away from–”

“Be easy on the lad, Miller. He's gone now, anyway.”

“I don't know what's wrong with him. As soon as Al Junior is down, I see Cally's face wherever I look. Like an undertaker hoping for a fee.”

“Maybe it's strange to him. To have Alvin hurt.”

“As many times as Alvin's been an inch from death–”

“But never injured.”

A long silence.

“Taleswapper.”

“Yes, Mr. Miller?”

“You've been a good friend to us here, sometimes in spite of ourselfs. But I reckon you're still a walking man.”

“That I am, Mr. Miller.”

“What I'm saying is, not to rush you off, but if you go anytime soon, and you happen to be heading generally eastward, do you think you could carry a letter for me?”

“I'd be glad to. And no fee, to sender or receiver.”

“That's right kind of you. I been thinking on what you said. About a boy needing to be sent far off from certain dangers. And I thought, in all the world where's there some folks I can trust to took after the boy? We got no kin worth speaking of back in New England– I don't want the boy raised Puritan on the brink of hell anyway.”

“I'm relieved to hear that, Mr. Miller, because I have no great longing to see New England again myself.”

“If you just follow back on the road we made coming west, sooner or later you come along to a place on the Hatrack River, some thirty miles north of the Hio, not all that far downriver from Fort Dekane. There's a road house there, or leastwise there was, with a graveyard out back where a stone says 'Vigor he died to save his kin.'”

“You want me to take the boy?”

“No, no, I'll not send him now that the snow's come. Water–”

“I understand.”

“There's a blacksmith there, and I thought he might want a prentice. Alvin's young, but he's big for his age, and I reckon he'll be a bargain for the smith.”

“Prentice?”

“Well, I sure won't make him a bond slave, now, will I? And I got no money to send him off to school.”

“I'll take the letter. But I hope I can stay till the boy is awake, so I can say good-bye.”

“I wasn't going to send you out tonight, was I? Nor tomorrow, with new snow deep enough to smother bunnies.”

“I didn't know if you had noticed the weather.”

“I always notice when there's water underfoot.” He laughed wryly, and they left the room.

Alvin Junior lay there, trying to figure why Pa wanted to send him away. Hadn't he done right all his life, as best he could? Hadn't he tried to help all he knew how? Didn't he go to Reverend Thrower's school, even though the preacher was out to make him mad or stupid? Most of all, didn't he finally get a perfect stone down from the mountain, holding it together all the time, teaching it the way to go, and at the very end risking his leg just so the stone wouldn't split? And now they were going to send him away.

Prentice! To a blacksmith! In his whole life he never even saw a blacksmith up to now. They had to ride three days to the nearest smithy, and Pa never let him go along. In his whole life he never even been ten mile from home one way or any other.

In fact, the more he thought about it the madder he got. Hadn't he been begging Mama and Papa just to let him go out walking in the woods alone, and they wouldn't let him. Had to have somebody with him all the time, like he was a captive or a slave about to run off. If he was five minutes late getting somewhere, they came to look for him. He never got to go on long trips– the longest one ever was to the quarry a few times. And now, after they kept him penned up like a Christmas goose all his life, they were set to send him off to the end of the whole earth.

It was so blame unfair that tears come to his eyes and squeezed out and tickled down his cheeks right into his ears, which felt so silly it made him laugh.

“What you laughing at?” asked Cally.

Alvin hadn't heard him come in.

“Are you all better now? It ain't bleeding nowhere, Al.”