Fourteen-year-old Billy Hochstetler jolted awake with a start. He wasn’t sure what had wakened him. A noise downstairs. Or maybe the rain hammering against the roof. He lay in the warm softness of his bed, trying to get back to the dream and failing because his heart was pounding and he didn’t know why. He stared into the darkness, listening. But the only sound came from the growl of thunder and the intermittent rattle of the loose spouting outside his window. One of these days he and datt were going to get up there with the ladder and fix it.

“Billy?”

He’d just dozed off when his little brother’s whispered voice brought him back. “Go back to sleep,” he groaned.

“I heard something.”

“You did not. Now, go back to sleep before you wake everyone.”

“There are people downstairs. Englischers.”

Propping himself up on an elbow, Billy frowned at his younger brother. Little Joe had just turned eight and looked so cute in his too-big nightshirt that Billy had to grin, despite his annoyance at having been wakened. “You’re just afraid of the storm. Scaredy-cat.”

“Am not!”

“Shhh.” Billy chuckled, not quite believing him. “Do you want to sleep in here?”

“Ja!” The little boy ran to the bed and jumped as if he were diving into the creek for a swim.

As his younger brother snuggled against him, Billy heard it, too. A noise from downstairs. A thud and then the scraping of wood against wood. He looked at Little Joe. “Did you hear that?”

“I told you.”

Rolling, Billy grabbed his pocket watch off the night table and squinted at the glowing face. It was half past three in the morning. His datt didn’t rise for another hour. So who was downstairs?

Billy got out of bed and crossed to the window. Parting the curtains, he looked out at the gravel driveway, but there was no one there. No buggy or vehicle. No lantern light in the barn. The workshop and showroom windows were dark.

He grabbed his trousers off the chair. He was stepping into them when the faint murmur of voices floated up through the heat vent at his feet. He and his family generally spoke Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch at home. Whoever was downstairs was speaking English. But who would be in their house in the middle of the night?

“Where you going?” Little Joe whispered.

Billy glanced at his brother, who’d pulled the covers up to his chin. “Go back to sleep.”

“I wanna go with you.”

“Shush.” After slipping on a shirt, he opened the door and started down the stairs, already anticipating a big helping of mamm’s scrapple. He hadn’t yet reached the base of the stairs when the yellow slash of a flashlight beam played over the wall.

“Datt?” he called out. “Mamm?”

The shuffle of shoes against the wood plank floor was the only reply.

He reached the kitchen only to find himself blinded by the beam of a flashlight. He raised his hand to shield his eyes. “Who’s there?”