He bent over and kissed the boy on the forehead. Alvin reached up and held him with both arms, hanging on him so that he couldn’t stand up without lifting the boy clear out of bed. After a while, Taleswapper had to reach up and pull the boy’s arms away. His cheek was wet with Alvin’s tears. He didn’t wipe them away. He let the breeze dry them as he trudged along the cold dry path, with fields of half-melted snow stretching left and right.

He paused a moment on the second covered bridge. Just long enough to wonder if he’d ever come back here, or see them again. Or get Alvin Junior’s sentence for his book. If he were a prophet, he’d know. But he hadn’t the faintest idea.

He walked on, setting his feet toward morning.

Chapter Thirteen—Surgery

The visitor sat comfortably upon the altar, leaning casually on his left arm, so that his body had a jaunty tilt. Reverend Thrower had seen just such an informal pose taken by a dandy from Camelot, a rakehell who clearly despised everything that the Puritan churches of England and Scotland stood for. It made Thrower more than a little uncomfortable to see the Visitor in such an irreverent pose.

“Why?” asked the Visitor. “Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in your lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”

Thrower was embarrassed. “It isn’t fair to chastise me for my thoughts.”

“It is, when your thoughts chastise me for my actions. Beware of hubris, my friend. Do not fancy yourself so righteous that you can judge the acts of angels.”

It was the first time the Visitor had ever called himself an angel.

“I did not call myself anything,” said the Visitor. “You must learn to control your thoughts, Thrower. You leap to conclusions far too easily.”

“Why have you come to me?”

“It’s a matter of the maker of this altar,” said the Visitor. He patted one of the crosses Alvin Junior had burnt into the wood.

“I’ve done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”

“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”

“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”

“An obnoxious child.”

“The worst I have ever seen,” said Thrower.

The Visitor’s eyes flashed. Thrower felt a stab in his heart.

“I’ve tried,” said Thrower. “I’ve tried to turn him to serve the Lord. But the influence of his father—“