As if a wick had been turned a little lower in a great clear lamp beyond the town, the sky darkened still more. He stood on the porch, his mouth gasping and working. His fist still thrust straight out at that house across the street and down the way. He looked at the fist and it dissolved, the world dissolved beyond it.

Going upstairs, in the dark, where he could only feel his face but see nothing of himself, not even his fists, he told himself over and over, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him!

Ten minutes later, slowly he reached the top of the stairs, in the dark . . .

“Tom,” said Douglas, “just promise me one thing, okay?”

“It’s a promise. What?”

“You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?”

“You mean you’ll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?”

“Well . . .sure . . .even that. What I mean is, don’t go away, huh? Don’t let any cars run over you or fall off a cliff.” “I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?”

“Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old—say forty or forty-five some day—we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing beards.”

“Growing beards! Boy!”

“Like I say, you stick around and don’t let nothing happen.”

“You can depend on me,” said Tom.

“It’s not you I worry about,” said Douglas. “It’s the way God runs the world.”

Tom thought about this for a moment.

“He’s all right, Doug,” said Tom. “He tries.”

She came out of the the bathroom putting iodine on her finger where she had almost lopped it off cutting herself a chunk of cocoanut cake. Just then the mailman came up the porch steps, opened the door, and walked in. The door slammed. Elmira Brown jumped a foot.

“Sam!” she cried. She waved her iodined finger on the air to cool it. “I’m still not used to my husband being a postman. Every time you just walk in, it scares the life out of me!”

Sam Brown stood there with the mail pouch half empty, scratching his head. He looked back out the door as if a fog had suddenly rolled in on a calm sweet summer morn.

“Sam, you’re home early,” she said.

“Can’t stay,” he said in a puzzled voice.

“Spit it out, what’s wrong?” She came over and looked into his face.

“Maybe nothing, maybe lots. I just delivered some mail to Clara Goodwater up the street . . .”

“Clara Goodwater!”

“Now don’t get your dander up. Books it was, from the Johnson-Smith Company, Racine, Wisconsin. Title of one book . . .let’s see now.” He screwed up his face, then unscrewed it. “Albertus Magnus-that’s it. Being the approved, verified, sympathetic and natural EGYPTIAN SECRETS or . . .” He peered at the ceiling to summon the lettering. “White and Black Art for Man and Beast, Revealing the Forbidden Knowledge and Mysteries of Ancient Philosophers!”

“Clara Goodwater’s you say?”

“Walking along, I had a good chance to peek at the front pages, no harm in that. ‘Hidden Secrets of Life Unveiled by that celebrated Student, Philosopher, Chemist, Naturalist, Psychomist, Astrologer, Alchemist, Metallurgist, Sorcerer, Explanator of the Mysteries of Wizards and Witchcraft, together with recondite views of numerous Arts and Sciences—Obscure, Plain, Practical, etc. ’ There! By God, I got a head like a box Brownie. Got the words, even if I haven’t got the sense.”

Elmira stood looking at her iodined finger as if it were pointed at her by a stranger.

“Clara Goodwater,” she murmured.

“Looked me right in the eye as I handed it over, said, ‘Going to be a witch, first-class no doubt. Get my diploma in no time. Set up business. Hex crowds and individuals, old and young, big and small. ’ Then she kinda laughed, put her nose in that book, and went in.”

Elmira stared at a bruise on her arm, carefully tongued a loose tooth in her jaw.

A door slammed. Tom Spaulding, kneeling on Elmira Brown’s front lawn, looked up. He had been wandering about the neighborhood, seeing how the ants were doing here or there, and had found a particularly good hill with a big hole in which all kinds of fiery bright pismires were tumbling about scissoring the air and wildly carrying little packets of dead grasshopper and infinitesimal bird down into the earth. Now here was something else: Mrs. Brown, swaying on the edge of her porch as if she’d just found out the world was falling through space at sixty trillion miles a second. Behind her was Mr. Brown, who didn’t know the miles per second and probably wouldn’t care if he did know.

“You, Tom!” said Mrs. Brown. “I need moral support and the equivalent of the blood of the Lamb with me. Come along!”

And off she rushed, squashing ants and kicking tops off dandelions and trotting big spiky holes in flower beds as she cut across yards.

Tom knelt a moment longer studying Mrs. Brown’s shoulder blades and spine as she toppled down the street. He read the bones and they were eloquent of melodrama and adventure, a thing he did not ordinarily connect with ladies, even though Mrs. Brown had the remnants of a pirate’s mustache. A moment later he was in tandem with her.

“Mrs. Brown, you sure look mad!”

“You don’t know what mad is, boy!”

“Watch out!” cried Tom.

Mrs. Elmira Brown fell right over an iron dog lying asleep there on the green grass.

“Mrs. Brown!”

“You see?” Mrs. Brown sat there. “Clara Goodwater did this to me! Magic!”

“Magic?”

“Never mind, boy. Here’s the steps. You go first and kick any invisible strings out of the way. Ring that doorbell, but pull your finger off quick, the juice’ll burn you to a cinder!”

Tom did not touch the bell.

“Clara Goodwater!” Mrs. Brown flicked the bell button with her iodined finger.

Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded.

Tom listened. Still farther away there was a stir of mouselike running. A shadow, perhaps a blowing curtain, moved in a distant parlor.

“Hello,” said a quiet voice.

And quite suddenly Mrs. Goodwater was there, fresh as a stick of peppermint, behind the screen.

“Why, hello there, Tom, Elmira. What—”

“Don’t rush me! We came over about your practicing to be a full-fledged witch!”

Mrs. Goodwater smiled. “Your husband’s not only a mailman, but a guardian of the law. Got a nose out to here!”

“He didn’t look at no mail.”

“He’s ten minutes between houses laughing at post cards. and tryin’ on mail-order shoes.”

“It ain’t what he seen; it’s what you yourself told him about the books you got.”

“Just a joke. Goin’ to be a witch! I said, and bang! Off gallops Sam, like I’d flung Lightning at him. I declare there can’t be one wrinkle in that man’s brain.”

“You talked about your magic other places yesterday—”

“You must mean the Sandwich Club . . .”

“To which I pointedly was not invited.”

“Why, lady, we thought that was your regular day with your grandma.”

“I can always have another Grandma day, if people’d only ask me places.”

“All there was to it at the Sandwich Club was me sitting there with a ham and pickle sandwich, and I said right out loud, “At last I’m going to get my witch’s diploma. Been studying for years!”

“That’s what come back to me over the phone!”

“Ain’t modern inventions wonderful!” said Mrs. Goodwater.

“Considering you been president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge since the Civil War, it seems, I’ll put it to you bang on the nose, have you used witchcraft all these years to spell the ladies and win the ayes-have-it?”

“Do you doubt it for a moment, lady?” said Mrs. Goodwater.

“Election’s tomorrow again, and all I want to know is, you runnin’ for another term—and ain’t you ashamed?”

“Yes to the first question and no to the second. Lady, look here, I bought those books for my boy cousin, Raoul. He’s just ten and goes around looking in hats for rabbits. I told him there’s about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him.