“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.’”