"You knew, last night, you _knew_ it was that fellow Plum making that foul commotion, knew and would not tell me. Benjamin, I marvel at you, I do marvel." "But I thought----" "You thought!" She was dressed for the day; haggard, the mark of a pillow fading on her cheek. "Well, well--you thought what?" "When he stopped, I thought some friend must have taken him away, so you needn't to trouble about him." She said with intense patience: "Benjamin, I am not troubled about him. I knew him long before you were born, and why my husband saw fit to tolerate him I shall never know--excess of charity perhaps." "He saved our lives." "Indeed?" "He got us over the palisade when the village was burning." "Indeed? Any oaf can have a good impulse now and then. Someone else would have lent a hand if not he. You're not beholden." "There was no one else. Jesse was ever friendly to Ru and me. I never knew him unkind, Grandmother." "What? What? No unkindness to himself and others to live with the conversation of a hog, to spend all the years God gave him in utter blasphemy?" Her voice climbed. "Blasphemy, swinish drunkenness, sin and corruption, knowing the truth--why, he was instructed; your grandfather and I saw to that--knowing it and rejecting it, knowing his steps went down to Hell and heedless continually. No unkindness?" "He was not like that, Grandmother." "You contradict me?... Benjamin, go in the parlor. I'll come to you presently." She pointed at the door and Ben shambled through it, more in flight than obedience. The place was clammily cold, and dark. Ben remembered to avoid Grandfather Matthew's throne. He stood by the fireplace spreading his hands where no warmth was. Pain gnawed at his knee; he wondered if he ought to have kept on Goody Hawks' poultice. Almost at once Grandmother Cory was confronting him in the gloom. "Jonas!" When the big man tiptoed in she said: "Open the shutters." Thin light brought no comfort. "Light the fire--boy appears to be cold. Nay, first go wake that child upstairs if he's slept through all this--I wonder he could." "Oh, he could!" Ben snatched clumsily for something harmless to ease the tension. "Wide awake one minute and then----" "Benjamin, do please to be quiet. Jonas, bring Reuben down. He is to stay with Anna; he is not to come in here." Ben saw Jonas' witch-wife join him in the hallway and they went upstairs together. "Ah, Benjamin!--about your miserable clothes, I had hoped to employ part of this day in buying suitable garments for you and your brother, but now I suppose the time must be spent otherwise--and Lecture Day at that, when I must be at meeting after the noon hour. And you and Reuben ought to go too, but of course I cannot take you to the meeting-house looking like beggar boys and very likely lousy." "We are not! Grandmother, I----"