"You won't find me failing in understanding, Benjamin, but pray understand this once and for all: your failure last night to tell me about that fellow Plum was a lie--a lie of silence.... Oh, when word came yesterday I did pray that you and your brother might be brands from the burning. I do pray for it yet. I made plans for you, I searched my heart, I sought guidance, I even trusted I had found it. D'you think me cold, unnatural? D'you imagine I don't love you, my grandson?" She brushed with dry impatience at sudden tears. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Ben tried to catch a glimpse of Reuben, but the bulk of the Lloyds hid him as they passed the doorway. "Benjamin, what am I to do with you? What do you yourself think would be right for me to do with you, a liar, a wilderness child who hath something like the conversation of a savage?" "Grandmother, about Jesse----" "Plum again! And thus I'm answered! Why, the constable will see after all that." "Constable?" "Town authorities, boy. Burial. Is that what you meant?" "A pauper's burial." "Thankful heart, boy, I can't understand you. You wish the creature buried among the Saints?" "No, I...." Ben searched his mind hopelessly. During the night many polite convincing speeches had been prepared--scattered, one and all. He blurted the one thought his mind could hold: "Reuben and I must go to Uncle John Kenny at Roxbury." "What!" She was whitely horrified. "You don't know what you say." "Why, Grandmother, he was a friend to my father. They wrote to one another. Once Uncle John sent me a book." "He did?" She sat down slowly, little white hands stiff as ivory on the arms of the chair. "That may serve to explain much.... Benjamin, I require you to listen to me if only this once. I have reason to believe that my poor brother John is an atheist. I will trust you did not know this; now you do. He is an old man--as I'm old--and hardened, corrupt with false learning, evil conversation, a blasphemer, often fuddled with drink, a--a fornicator. He hath kept a mistress, at Roxbury, quite openly, under the name of housekeeper--for all I know the whore is there yet. Being wealthy, with friends in high places, none dares deal with him--that's the pass our colony hath arrived at. We builded a Zion; it becometh an abomination, a pen of swine, a nest of adulterers, blasphemers, sodomites, worshippers of the golden calf--vipers.... And now you wish me to allow you and that poor child your brother to go into that--that filthiness. Benjamin, I will hear nothing more about going to my brother at Roxbury. I will not send you to an even worse darkness than you dwelt in at Deerfield." "We dwelt in no darkness there!" "Benjamin, be careful!" The avalanche had him, all fences of caution swept aside. "You have no right to speak so of my father! We _will_ go to Roxbury!" "Benjamin, stop!" "And you'll bury Jesse like a dead dog--your Christian charity! Judgments--my father--you lie, lie!" "Jonas!"