“I’ve got the glass coming by boat,” said Armor. Then he winked. “I solved the problem of shipping on Lake Erie.”

“How did you manage that? The French are sinking every third boat, even from Irrakwa.”

“Simple. I ordered the glass from Montreal.”

“French glass in the windows of a British church!”

“An American church,” said Armor. “And Montreal’s a city in America, too. Anyway, the French may be trying to get rid of us, but in the meantime we’re a market for their manufactured goods, so the Governor, the Marquis de la Fayette, he doesn’t mind letting his people turn a profit from our trade as long as we’re here. They’re going to ship it clear around and down into Lake Michigan, and then barge it up the St. Joseph and down the Tippy-Canoe.”

“Will they make it before the bad weather?”

“I reckon so,” said Armor, “or they won’t get paid.”

“You’re an amazing man,” said Thrower. “But I wonder that you have so little loyalty to the British Protectorate.”

“Well, you see, that’s how it is,” said Armor. “You grew up under the Protectorate, and so you still think like an Englishman.”

“I’m a Scot, sir.”

“A Brit, anyway. In your country, everybody who was even rumored to be practicing the hidden arts got exiled, right away, hardly even bothered with a trial, did they?”

“We try to be just, but the ecclesiastical courts are swift, and there is no appeal.”

“Well, now, think about it. If everybody who had any gift for the hidden arts got shipped off to the American colonies, how would you ever see a lick of witchery while you were growing up?”

“I didn’t see it because there’s no such thing.”

“There’s no such thing in Britain. But it’s the curse of good Christians in America, because we’re up to our armpits in torches, doodlebugs, bog-stompers and hexifiers, and a child can’t hardly grow to be four feet tall without bumping headlong into somebody’s go-away or getting caught up in some prankster’s speak-all spell, so he says everything that comes to mind and offends everybody for ten miles around.”

“A speak-all spell! Now, Brother Armor, surely you can see that a touch of liquor does as much.”

“Not to a twelve-year-old boy who never touched a drop of liquor in his life.”

It was plain that Armor was talking from his own experience, but that didn’t change the facts. “There is always another explanation.”

“There’s a powerful lot of explanations you can think up for anything that happens,” said Armor. “But I tell you this. You can preach against conjuring, and you’ll still have a congregation. But if you keep on saying that conjuring don’t work, well, I reckon most folks’ll wonder why they should come all the way to church to hear the preaching of a plumb fool.”