“I’m glad he was awake, Elly, I truly am, but I hope you don’t expect the leg to get better. A big wound like that may look to be healing for a while, but the rot’ll set in pretty soon.”

“I don’t think so this time,” she said. “You want supper?”

“I must have gnawed down two loaves just pacing back and forth wondering whether you were even coming home.”

“It isn’t good for a man to get a belly.”

“Well, I got one, and it calls out for food just like any other man’s.”

“Mama gave me a cheese to bring home.” She set it out on the table.

Armor had his doubts. He figured half the reason Faith Miller’s cheeses turned out so good was because she did things to the milk. At the same time, there wasn’t no better cheese on the banks of the Wobbish, nor up Tippy-Canoe Creek neither.

It put him out of sorts when he caught himself compromising with witchery. And being out of sorts, he wasn’t about to let anything lie, even though he knew Elly plain didn’t want to talk about it. “Why don’t you think the leg will rot?”

“It’s just getting better so fast,” she said.

“How much better?”

“Oh, pert near fixed.”

“How near?”

She turned around, rolled her eyes, and turned back away from him. She started cutting up an apple to eat with the cheese.

“I said how near, Elly? How near fixed?”

“Fixed.”

“Two days after a millstone rips off the front half of his leg, and it’s fixed?”

“Only two days?” she said. “Seems like a week to me.”

“Calendar says it’s two days,” said Armor. “Which means there’s been witchery up there.”

“As I read the gospels, the one that healed people wasn’t no witch.”

“Who did it? Don’t tell me your pa or ma suddenly figured out something as strong as that. Did they conjure up a devil?”

She turned around, the knife in her hands still poised for cutting. There was a flash in her eyes. “Pa may be no kind of church man, but the devil never set foot in our house.”

That wasn’t what Reverend Thrower said, but Armor knew better than to bring him into the conversation. “It’s that beggar, then.”

“He works for his room and board. Hard as anyone.”

“They say he knew that old wizard Ben Franklin. And that atheist from Appalachee, Tom Jefferson.”

“He tells good stories. And he didn’t heal the boy neither.”

“Well, somebody did.”

“Maybe he just healed up himself. Anyway, the leg’s still broke. So it ain’t a miracle or nothing. He’s just a fast healer.”

“Well maybe he’s a fast healer cause the devil takes care of his own.”