Then the meeting broke up, and pretty soon it was time for us to go to bed. I had a chance to talk with Tom alone a minute, though, just before we went to our separate tents. All of us were as noisy as usual at bedtime, except Tom, and I noticed he still had a sad expression on his face, so when I got a chance, I walked with him to the end of the dock where we stood looking out over the pretty shimmering waves of the lake under the half moon that was shining on it, and I said, “’Smatter, Tom? Something the matter?” He just stood there, not saying a word for a minute until I said, “You’re one of my best friends, Tom.” Then he answered me very sadly, saying, “The mail boat brought a letter from Mother, and she’s worried about Dad. He’s gone again and nobody knows where he is.” I didn’t know what to say for a jiffy, so I just stood beside him thinking and feeling sorry for him, wishing his pop could be saved like Circus’s pop and that the Till family would all be Christians and go to church. I don’t know why I thought what else I thought just then, but this is what I thought--something I’d heard Old Man Paddler, back at Sugar Creek, say once, and it was, “A lot of husbands are murdering their wives a little at a time. Some day a lot of mean husbands are going to look down into the coffins at their wives’ funerals and realize that by making them sorry and not being kind to them, their wives died ten years sooner than they should have--and that’s the same as murder.” Old hook-nosed John Till was a murderer, too, I thought, as well as a drunkard, and it made me feel more sorry for the grand little red-haired freckle-faced guy who stood beside me. Tom had put his back to me. Both of his hands were clasped around the flag pole at the end of the dock, and he was just weaving his body backward and forward and sidewise like he was nervous. “Don’t worry, Tom,” I said, “you’ve got a lot of friends, and my mother thinks your mother is swell.” Right then I got the surprise of my life, when he said what he said. I hadn’t realized that this little guy liked his wicked daddy a lot, too. This is what he said, “There are a lot of crosses all over the country like the one Eagle Eye told us about--just like the one they put up for his Indian daddy--” Then Little Tom stopped talking and I heard him sniffle and I knew it wasn’t on account of the breeze from the lake or because he was allergic to anything. He liked his daddy and didn’t want him to get drunk and have a car accident and get killed. I felt terribly saddish, and at the same time a sort of wonderful, feeling came bubbling up inside of me. Say, I liked that little guy so much it actually hurt inside my heart. I reached out like my pop does to me sometimes, and put my arm halfway around him, and before I knew I was going to do it I’d given him the same kind of a half a hug Pop gives me and said, “Listen, Tom. I think God’s going to answer Eagle Eye’s prayer for you.”