The room shimmered. Red-black ghosts in a swirling jig hid the coats, defying Ben to come get them and fall on his face. He got them; then he too was drawn against his will to the window. The fire danced on his left, the heart of it out of sight--west and south, beyond the training field, the Hawks house perhaps. North, near the meeting-house, a confusion of shapes under gunfire was twisting toward some climax. Five fire-tinted men broke away, soundless to Ben, moving with apparent slowness. One leaped forward in mid-stride to drop in the white; his arms sought each other above his head, scooping the snow as if he would embrace it, or climb like a hurt bug up the side of a world for him overturned. The others disregarded him, plunging toward the Cory house. Reuben was trying to speak. "I'm here, Ru. We must go down--could be trapped." Reuben mumbled something. "What?" "Ben, I must----" "God damn it, don't be looking for the pot, use the floor, if they burn us who's to care?" Ben called again to his father, but his voice was swallowed by a bang. Not his father's gun--Jesse Plum's musket, a piece of trash the old man had picked up at third or fourth hand, likely to shoot anywhere but forward. "Come on, Ru!" "I'm sorry." "Your coat. Here--I'll button it for you." "Ben, I didn't pray tonight, nor I didn't forget neither." "What? Oh, put on your coat!" "I didn't pray." Ben forced the boy's arms into the coat and lifted him, amazed at his own strength, at the sureness of his feet on invisible stair-treads. "Ru, you deceive yourself." "Mr. Williams saith that without prayer----" "Ru, be still!" Jesse's wretched gun slammed again, a different sound, a spattering clang, followed by the stridency of Jesse cursing and weeping. Ben's mouth brushed Reuben's cheek; he tried to say something reassuring. How could even a child suppose the disaster was on his account? What of all those in Deerfield who did pray? He supposed Reuben would presently recover his wits, and set him down, but held him still in the hollow of his arm. No true dark prevailed here in the entry facing south. The front room's west window admitted the glare of the burning, showing the empty four-poster. Ben's father was a specter in a nightshirt, cursing himself for not having locked the shutters. "Where's Mother?" "In the hall." That was the name for the rear room, kitchen-parlor-workroom, heart of the little house. "Go to her, Reuben." Ben let him go. The brass face of the clock blurred in its tall oaken cabinet; Ben could not make it out. His time-sense said it was near dawn. Outside the front door voices set up a gobbling not in French. Joseph Cory yelled: "I hear you, God damn you!" And to Ben, quietly: "See to Jesse, I think his gun blowed. Find out if you will."