The bats hung under the hip of the roof, higher than any of us could reach, wings folded against limp bodies. We held our lamps toward them. The mouse-furred patch gave no living sign. Jonce wedged a dishpan he carried between the joists. He poured a ring of sulphur in the pan, whittled a shingle, and started a fire. A smudge of gray smoke rose toward the roof, musty with burnt sulphur. The bats stirred, trembling, waving like old leaves.

The smoke grew until our lamps yellowed through it, and we began to cough. One bat fell, spreading the web of its wings before striking the floor. Suddenly they all came down, weaving drunkenly through the smoke, blowing about our heads. They flew swiftly, escaping at last out of the boxed eaves and through the traphole in the floor. The smoke thickened until our eyes smarted, and we hurried down the ladder.

The bats were gone when we got down. We put out the lamps, and wiped watery eyes with our sleeves. The scholars who had stayed behind were knotted around a bench, their backs turned to us, and there was none to see how proudly we came down the ladder. The scholars leaned closer to the bench, the joy of the bat-fly gone out of their faces. Jonce threw the hot dishpan into the yard and walked toward them, wondering. They stood aside as he came. Euly sat on the bench, holding a hand to her neck, her face white as beech bark. I was frightened, and the lamp fell from my hand.

“Bee Mauldraugh put a bat on me,” Euly said. “It bit my neck.”

Jonce’s eyes searched the room, lighting on Bee standing against the blackboard, edging toward the door. Jonce sprang toward him, catching his sleeve as he crossed the threshold, and pushed him toward the pulpit. He caught up a willow pointer and struck Bee sharply across the legs, once, twice, and then Bee cried out in pain and anger, jerked loose, and leaped through a window. Jonce stood awkwardly with Bee’s torn sleeve in his hand.

“Jonce ought never done that,” Leth said to me. “He ought never touched Bee.”

“Jonce ain’t scared,” I said. “Nary a grain, now.”

“Uncle Hodge’U be coming,” Leth said. “He vowed a feller ain’t going to draw breath who whips Bee.”

Jonce folded a handkerchief and wrapped it around Euly’s neck. “Everybody can go home now,” he said. “Everybody can go.”