Thrower let Armor lead the way onto the Millers’ porch. They couldn’t very well turn away their daughter’s husband. His concern was unfounded, however. It was Goody Faith who opened the door, not her pagan husband.

“Why, Reverend Thrower, if you ain’t being too kind to us, stopping up here,” she said. The cheerfulness of her voice was a lie, though, if her haggard face was telling the truth. There hadn’t been much good sleep in this house lately.

“I brought him along, Mother Faith,” said Armor. “He come only cause I asked him.”

“The pastor of our church is welcome in my home whenever it pleases him to come by,” said Faith.

She ushered them into the great room. A group of girls making quilt squares looked up at him from their chairs near the hearth. The little boy, Cally, was doing his letters on a board, writing with charcoal from the fire.

“I’m glad to see you doing your letters,” said Thrower.

Cally just looked at him. There was a hint of hostility in his eyes. Apparently the boy resented having his teacher look at his work here at home, which he had supposed was a sanctuary.

“You’re doing them well,” said Thrower, trying to put the boy at ease. Cally said nothing, just looked down again at his makeshift slate and kept on scrawling out words.

Armor brought up their business right away. “Mother Faith, we come cause of Alvin. You know how I feel about witchery, but I never before said a word against what you folks do in your house. I always reckoned that was your business and none of mine. But that boy is paying the price for the evil ways that you’ve let go on here. He witched his leg, and now there’s a devil in him, killing him off, and I brought Reverend Thrower here to wring that devil on out of him.”

Goody Faith looked puzzled. “There ain’t no devil in this house.”

Ah, poor woman, said Thrower silently. If you only knew how long a devil has dwelt here. “It is possible to become so accustomed to the presence of a devil as not to recognize that it is presene.”

A door by the stairs opened up, and Mr. Miller stepped backward through the doorway. “Not me,” he said, talking to whoever was in that room. “I’ll not lay a knife to the boy.”

Cally jumped up at the sound of his father’s voice and ran to him. “Armor brung old Thrower here, Papa, to kill the devil.”

Mr. Miller turned around, his face twisted with unidentified emotion, and looked at the visitors as if he hardly recognized them.

“I’ve got good strong hexes on this house,” said Goody Faith.

“Those hexes are a summons for the devil,” said Armor. “You think they protect your house, but they drive away the Lord.”