Reuben thought: I _must_ speak, if only for thanks. But Ben, sitting by him, a hand spread without pressure on Reuben's chest, was saying everything, taking care of everything. "You're most kind, ma'am." "Eh, Lord, nothing--shame if we couldn't help the Lord's own on such a day...." Reuben saw his brother wince and lean down, pulling up the leg of his breeches to bare his knee. Though it made the room swirl dangerously, Reuben braced up on his elbow to look at the long splinter embedded below Ben's kneecap. "Law me!" Goody Hawks knelt by Ben, clucking and muttering. She secured the end of the splinter in horny nails, drew it free with skillful quickness and held it up. "You walked from Deerfield with that and all? Marry, it's two inches long if I'm a day old. You must have a poultice of sawdust or the like. I'll fetch it when I bring the tea. That'll draw out any that's left--like draws like, you know--eh, Lord, what a thing, I'd've dropped flat with it in twenty paces." Reuben thought: I _will_ speak, and his hand reached out, and he heard his own voice as a hoarse and stupid little noise: "Give it here." Goody Hawks dropped the stained thing in Reuben's hand, apparently not puzzled that he should want it, though Ben was, and studied him with some mixture of amusement and concern. Reuben pushed the splinter into his shirt pocket, and then, in some dread that Ben might ask questions unanswerable, he lay back and shut his eyes. He heard them whispering together a little while, the sound partly smothered by the snoring of Jesse Plum. "... was there when our mother was killed ... outside the house, but he was forced to see...." Reuben thought: _A stairway. I am lying still--nevertheless a stairway._ As Goody Hawks tiptoed from the room, he felt again on his chest the undemanding weightless warmth. * * * * * "Ben, what are we to do?" "Nothing for now, except you should rest.... I suppose Grandmother will have room for us. If not there's Uncle John at Roxbury." "Last night I saw a part of his letter that Father didn't read aloud. Uncle John must be a great infidel." "What did he write?" "'Nor no man, by threat of damnation nor promise of paradise, shall ever betray me into the folly of hating my neighbor, whether in the name of princes who are but men or in the name of a God I know not....' How could anyone write such a thing, unless he...." "Marry, I don't know. I think--oh, let it be, Ru. He's a good man, we know that.... I suppose he only meant that the general opinion is not his own, that his own religion is in some manner different." "Yes, maybe.... Ben, is it true 'tis a hundred miles to Boston and Roxbury?" "More than a hundred, I believe." "Will the French be coming down this way, you think?"