"So it went for three weeks, Alvin, and then it was Sunday morning and here I sat and there she sat and you were running round, and it came a knock at the door and there was the preacher. I was studying my lesson for the Sunday School. It was about Ananias. I had learned the answers and the Golden Text, but it was not yet time to go. I always went to church; I liked to go to church. Then there came this knocking, Alvin, and it was the preacher. I thought perhaps he had come to give her the communion while she wasn't very well and couldn't go down through the snow. The preacher came in and he looked at me. "'William,' said the preacher to me, 'do you remember how I gave you the key to the cupboard when you fixed the wall?' "'Why, yes,' I said. 'Of course!' "'William,' said he to me, 'did you open the cupboard?' "'Why, no,' I said. 'I didn't have to, Para [Pastor].' "'Were you away from the church?' "'No,' I said. 'I took my dinner. She can tell you that.' "'Why, William,' said he to me, 'the communion set is gone! The communion set is gone,' he said, 'gone!' "I went with him to the church, Alvin, and I looked into the cupboard. Everything was gone, Alvin, bag and all. Then I came home and after a while they came. They wanted to talk, they wanted me to tell them everything that had happened all day. But I couldn't tell them anything. I had built the wall and a little one had talked to me, that was all. There she sat and here I sat and it was dark. Then, Alvin, it came to me! When I got halfway up the window, it was too high to go farther, and I went out of the church to get boards and build a platform across chairs so that I could reach. I was gone some little time, and when I came back Hartman was going down the pike. It was Hartman that took the communion set." Alvin moved toward the side of his chair, and away from his father. "Then I got up and went down the hill, and into Hartman's house I walked. He was sitting by the table with his best clothes on to go to church and she was there, too. They were always rich; they had everything grand. I made tracks on her clean floor, and she looked sharp at me, but I did not care. I spoke right up to him. "'When I was building the wall in the church,' I said, 'I went out for a few boards. In that time you were in the church and took the communion set.' "He did not look at me, Alvin; he just sat there. "'What would I do with a communion set?' he said after a while to me. "'I do not know what you would do with it,' I said back to him, 'but you have it. You took it. God will punish you like Ananias.'