The minister in the country church talked of that time when Mary Magdalene, the woman who had been taken in adultery, was being stoned by the crowd of men who had forgotten their own sins and when, in the tale the minister told, Jesus approached and rescued the woman Tom’s heart thumped with excitement. Then later the minister talked of how Jesus was tempted by the devil, as he stood on a high place in the mountain, but the boy did not listen. He leaned forward and looked out through a window across fields and the minister’s words came to him but in broken sentences. Tom took what was said concerning the temptation on the mountain to mean that Mary had followed Jesus and had offered her body to him, and that afternoon, when he had returned with the others to the farm where they were to begin threshing on the next morning, he called the fat boy aside and asked his opinion. The two boys walked across a field of wheat-stubble and sat down on a log in a grove of trees. It had never occurred to Tom that a man could be tempted by a woman. It had always seemed to him that it must be the other way, that women must always be tempted by men. “I thought men always asked,” he said, “and now it seems that women sometimes do the asking. That would be a fine thing if it could happen to us. Don’t you think so?” The two boys arose and walked under the trees and dark shadows began to form on the ground underfoot. Tom burst into words and continually asked questions and the fat boy, who had been often to church and for whom the figure of Jesus had lost most of its reality, felt a little embarrassed. He did not think the subject should be thus freely discussed and when Tom’s mind kept playing with the notion of Jesus, pursued and tempted by a woman, he grunted his disapproval. “Do you think he really refused?” Tom asked over and over. The fat boy tried to explain. “He had twelve disciples,” he said. “It couldn’t have happened. They were always about. Well, you see, she wouldn’t ever have had no chance. Wherever he went they went with him. They were men he was teaching to preach. One of them later betrayed him to soldiers who killed him.” Tom wondered. “How did that come about? How could a man like that be betrayed?” he asked. “By a kiss,” the fat boy replied.