“Niece!” I breathed. “Oh, Nils! Shall I write out an Ex. 20:16 for you to nail on the wagon?”
“She’ll have to be someone,” said Nils. “When we get to Margin, we’ll have to explain her somehow. She’s named for your sister, so she’s our niece. Simple, isn’t it?”
“Sounds so,” I said. “But, Nils who is she? How did that man know-? If those were her people that died back there, where are their wagons? Their belongings? People don’t just drop out of the sky-“
“Maybe these Graftonites took the people there to execute them,” he suggested, “and confiscated their goods.”
“Be more characteristic if they burned the people in the town square,” I said shivering. “And their wagons, too.”
We made camp. Marnie followed me to the spring. I glanced around, embarrassed for her in the nightgown, but no one else was around and darkness was failing. We went through the wall by a little gate and were able for the first time to see the houses of the village. They were very ordinary looking except for the pale flutter of papers posted profusely on everything a nail could hold to. How could they think of anything but sinning, with all these ghosty reminders?
While we were dipping the water, a small girl, enveloped in gray calico from slender neck to thin wrists and down to clumsy shoes, came pattering down to the spring, eyeing us as though she expected us to leap upon her with a roar.
“Hello,” I said and smiled.
“God have mercy,” she answered in a breathless whisper.
“Are you right with God?”
“I trust so,” I answered, not knowing if the question required an answer.
“She’s wearing white,” said the child, nodding at Marnie.
“Is she dying?”
“No,” I said, “but she’s been ill. That is her nightgown.”
“Oh!” The child’s eyes widened and her hand covered her mouth. “How wicked! To use such a bad word! To be in her-her-to be like that outside the house! In the daytime!” She plopped her heavy bucket into the spring and, dragging it out, staggered away from us, slopping water as she went. She was met halfway up the slope by a grim- faced woman, who set the pail aside, switched the weeping child unmercifully with a heavy willow switch, took a paper from her pocket, impaled it on a nail on a tree, seized the child with one hand and the bucket with the other, and plodded back to town.
I looked at the paper. Ex. 20:12. “Well!” I let out an astonished breath. “And she had it already written!” Then I went back to Marnie. Her eyes were big and empty again, the planes of her face sharply sunken.
“Marnie,” I said, touching her shoulder. There was no response, no consciousness of me as I led her back to the wagon.
Nils retrieved the bucket of water and we ate a slender, unhappy supper by the glow of our campfire. Marnie ate nothing and sat in a motionless daze until we put her to bed.
“Maybe she’s subject to seizures,” I suggested.
“It was more likely watching the child being beaten,” said Nils. “What had she done?”
“Nothing except to talk to us and be shocked that Marnie should be in her nightgown in public.”
“What was the paper the mother posted?” asked Nils.
“Exodus, 20:12,” I said. “The child must have disobeyed her mother by carrying on a conversation with us.”
After a fitful, restless night the first thin light of dawn looked wonderful and we broke camp almost before we had shadows separate from the night. Just before we rode away, Nils wrote large and blackly on a piece of paper and fastened it to the wall near our wagon with loud accusing hammer blows. As we drove away, I asked, “What does it say?”
“Exodus, Chapter 22, verses 21 through 24,” he said. “If they want wrath, let it fall on them!”
I was too unhappy and worn out to pursue the matter. I only knew it must be another Shalt Not and was thankful that I had been led by my parents through the Rejoice and Love passages instead of into the darkness.
Half an hour later, we heard the clatter of hooves behind us and, looking back, saw someone riding toward us, waving an arm urgently. Nils pulled up and laid his hand on his rifle. We waited.
It was the anxious man who had directed us to the campsite. He had Nils’s paper clutched in his hand. At first he couldn’t get his words out, then he said, “Drive on! Don’t stop! They might be coming after me!” He gulped and wiped his nervous forehead, Nils slapped the reins and we moved off down the road. “Y-you left this-” He jerked the paper toward us. “‘Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him-’” the words came in gasps. “‘Ye shalt not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any wise, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath shall wax hot-’” He sagged in the saddle, struggling for breath. “This is exactly what I told them,” he said finally. “I showed it to them-the very next verses-but they couldn’t see past 22:18. They-they went anyway. That Archibold told them about the people. He said they did things only witches could do. I had to go along. Oh, God have mercy! And help them tie them and watch them set the shed afire!”
“Who were they?” asked Nils.
“I don’t know.” The man sucked air noisily. “Archibold said he saw them flying up in the trees and laughing. He said they floated rocks around and started to build a house with them. He said they-they walked on the water and didn’t fall in. He said one of them held a piece of wood up in the air and it caught on fire and other wood came and made a pile on the ground and that piece went down and lighted the rest.” The man wiped his face again. “They must have been witches! Or else how could they do such things! We caught them. They were sleeping. They fluttered up like birds. I caught that little girl you’ve got there, only her hair was long then. We tied them up. I didn’t want to!” Tears jerked out of his eyes. “I didn’t put any knots in my rope and after the roof caved in, the little girl flew out all on fire and hid in the dark! I didn’t know the Graftonites were like that! I only came last year. They-they
