Reuben tried then, long and earnestly, to pray in the manner of his childhood, repeating familiar words aloud, since Ben was too far lost in sleep and sickness to be disturbed. During the act of supplication, some memory nagged. Something demoralizing, to be refused, but at last it sharpened into focus in spite of him. His mother had prayed: "Deliver us from evil ..." her clear voice completing the words, twice, three times perhaps in that reddened doorway until she received the answer, the blow, itself a completion which God had allowed. To Reuben the sound of his own voice became alien, then contemptible, a disgusting whine. A human being ought never to sound like that. Why should God listen to such a squeak? In the abrupt silence the words of that question swelled to vast importance. They were not right. The question was not the right one. Change it. Shorten it. Why should God listen?... The question was still not the right one. Reuben crawled out into cold sunless light. He searched the east. The sun was present, a hazed white blur just visible in the overcast. New snowflakes were already drifting, far apart, without a wind. Why God?... That was not merely the sun but something of the mind, old, vaguely evil, dying, dissolving not quite as a dream dissolves but with the illogic and inconsequence of a dream. Reuben said aloud: "Why?..." _The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether._ The snow would thicken, covering all things. It increased as he watched, the white ball fading, blotted out at last in the gray and white morning. The cold was not severe. No wind was blowing. Reuben said: "I do not believe it." He crept back into the shelter to hold his brother in his arms. * * * * * Late in the morning Ben woke in a remission of the fever, knowing Reuben was not far away. To the complex interesting lines above him--evidently a roof--he said experimentally: "I must have been sick." "Lie quiet!" The power of Reuben's hand on his chest startled him, the sodden ache of his own muscles dismayed him. "We can't go on today, Ben. It's snowing heavy. I mean to light a fire--with all the snow they'll never see the smoke, if they come this way at all." "They?--oh." Ben doubtfully remembered. It would not do for Reuben to guess how puzzled he was; craftily he asked: "How far you think we came from Hatfield?" "Hatfield?" "How stupid I am!" The unintended words drawled out of his mouth and floated away. "Meant Deerfield. My leg...." Reuben (who knew everything) helped him shove down his breeches, then allowed him to sit up and look at the splinter-wound, a yellowish scabby island in a puddle of pink. He wished to study it, but Reuben was already pulling up the musty repellent garment and urging him back on the pile of sweet-smelling leaves. "Suppose that's what made me sick?" "Maybe." "Suppose I ought to be bled?"