And a single drawing, burnt into a fine slab of oakwood with the tip of a hot knife. He’d rather have worked with wax and acid on metal, but there was neither to be had in this place. So he burnt lines into the wood, making of it what he could. A picture of a young man caught in a strong river, bound up in the roots of a floating tree, gasping for breath, his eyes facing death fearlessly. It would have earned nothing but scorn at the Lord Protector’s Academy of Art, being so plain. But Goody Faith cried out when she saw it, and hugged it to her, dropping her tears over it like the last drips from the eaves after a rainstorm. And Father Alvin, when he saw it, nodded and said, “That’s your vision, Taleswapper. You got his face perfect, and you never even saw him. That’s Vigor. That’s my boy.” Then he cried, too.

They set it right up on the mantel. It might not be great art, thought Taleswapper, but it was true, and it meant more to these folks than any portrait could mean to some fat old lord or parliamentarian in London or Camelot or Paris or Vienna.

“It’s fair morning now,” said Goody Faith. “You’ve got long to go before dark.”

“You can’t blame me for being reluctant to leave. Though I’m glad you trusted me with this errand, and I won’t fail you.” He patted his pocket, wherein lay the letter to the blacksmith of Hatrack River.

“You can’t go without you say good-bye to the boy,” said Miller.

He’d put it off as long as it could be delayed. He nodded once, then eased himself from the comfortable chair by the fire and went on into the room where he’d slept the best nights of his life. It was good to see Alvin Junior’s eyes wide open, his face lively, no longer slack the way it was for a while, or winced up with pain. But the pain was still there, Taleswapper knew.

“You going?” asked the boy.

“I’m gone, except for saying good-bye to you.”

Alvin looked a little angry. “So you ain’t even going to let me write in your book?”

“Not everybody does, you know.”

“Pa did. And Mama.”

“And Cally, too.”

“I bet that looks good,” said Alvin. “He writes like a, like a—“

“Like a seven-year-old.” It was a rebuke, but Alvin had no intention of squirming.

“Why not me, then? Why Cally and not me?”

“Because I only let people write the most important thing they ever did or ever saw with their own eyes. What would you write?”

“I don’t know. Maybe about the millstone.”

Taleswapper made a face.

“Then maybe my vision. That’s important, you said so yourself.”

“And that got written up somewhere else, Alvin.”