“Yes, it might have been a coincidence. But when a boy’s life is made up of just those things you begin to suspect after a while that perhaps they are too everlastingly reliable for coincidences. You can’t always bet on coincidences, but you can bet every time on Amos. My daughter Phœbe kept school down in the village for a spell when Amos was about ten years old. There was another boy, Billy Hines, who never missed a lesson. Phœbe knew he was a dull boy and that he always tried to give larnin’ the whole road whenever he saw it comin’, and it kinder surprised her to have him stand at the head of his class all the time and make better recitations than smarter boys who worked hard. But he always knew everything and never missed a question. He and Amos were great friends, more because Amos felt sorry for him, I guess, than anything else. Billy used to stand up and shine every day, when she knew mighty well he was the slowest chap in the whole school and hadn’t studied his lessons neither. Well, one day Amos got hove about twenty feet by a colt he was tryin’ to ride and he stayed in bed a few weeks. Durin’ that time Billy Hines couldn’t answer a question. Not a question. He and arithmetic were strangers. Also geography, history, and everything else that he’d been intimate with. He jest stopped shinin’, like a candle with a stopper on it. The amount of it was she found that Amos had always told him ahead the questions he was goin’ to be asked, and Billy learned the answers just before he stood up to recite.” “Why, how did Amos--how did Mr. Judd know what questions would be asked?” “I guess ’twas just a series of coincidences that happened to last all winter.” Molly laughed. “How unforgiving you are, Mr. White! But did Amos Judd explain it?” “He didn’t. He was too young then to do it to anybody’s satisfaction, and now that he’s older he won’t.” “Why not?” “Well, he’s kind of sensitive about it. Never talks of those things, and don’t like to have other folks.” Molly stood looking over toward the Judd house, wondering how much of the Deacon’s tale was truth, and how much was village gossip exaggerated by repetition. “Did you ever hear about Josiah’s death?” Molly shook her head.