It was cold. He had no coat, not even his waistcoat. His shirt was already wet, and now it clung to him and froze him to the bone. He had to get indoors, but he couldn’t bear to knock on anybody’s door. There was only one place he could go. Up the hill to the church. Thrower had firewood there, so he’d be warm. And in the church he could pray and try to understand why the Lord didn’t help him. Haven’t I served you, Lord?

Reverend Thrower opened the door of the church and walked slowly, fearfully inside. He could not bear to face the Visitor, knowing how he had failed. For it had been his own failure, he knew that now. Satan should have had no power over him, to drive him from the house that way. An ordained minister, acting as the emissary of the Lord, following instructions given to him by an angel—Satan should not have been able to thrust him out of the house like that, before he even knew what was happening.

He stripped off his cloak, and his topcoat as well. The church was hot. The fire in the stove must have burned longer than he expected. Or maybe he felt the heat of shame.

It could not be that Satan was stronger than the Lord. The only possible explanation was that Thrower himself was too weak. It was his own faith that faltered.

Thrower knelt at the altar and cried out the name of the Lord. “Forgive thou my unbelief!” he cried. “I held the knife, but Satan stood against me, and I had no strength!” He recited a litany of self-excoriation, he rehearsed all his failures of the day, until at last he was exhausted.

Only then, with his eyes sore from crying, his voice feeble and hoarse, did he realize the moment when his faith was undermined. It was when he stood in Alvin’s room, asking the boy to confess his faith, and the boy scoffed at the mysteries of God. “How can he be on top of something that ain’t got no top?” Even though Thrower had rejected the question as the result of ignorance and evil, the question had nevertheless pierced his heart and penetrated to the core of his belief. Certainties that had sustained him most of his life were suddenly split through by the questions of an ignorant boy. “He stole my faith,” said Thrower. “I went into his room a man of God, and came out as a doubter.”

“Indeed,” said a voice behind him. A voice he knew.

A voice that now, in his moment of failure, he both feared and longed for. Oh, forgive me, comfort me, my Visitor, my friend! Yet do not fail also to chastise me with the terrible wrath of a jealous God.

“Chastise you?” asked the Visitor. “How could I chastise you, such a glorious specimen of humanity?”