Every time you scorn what confounds you, he smiles. Every time you sow the fear of him where there was none, he laughs. It's you he loves, Whitney, not me. It's you he thanks in his evening prayers." The tables had- been turned so simply and so eloquently that for a moment Whitney did not fully comprehend his defeat. He stared at his opponent with a frown upon his face, while Harmon turned and addressed the crowd. "If you don't wish me and my daughter to travel with you any further," he said, "if you believe the slanders you've heard, then say so now, and we'll go another way. But be certain, all of you be certain, there is nothing in my heart or head but that the Lord God put it there...."

There were tears in his voice as he came to the end of his speech, and Maeve slipped her hand into his to comfort him. Side by side they stood in front of the company, awaiting judgment. There was a short silence. It was broken not by Whitney but by Marsha Winthrop.

"I don't see no good reason to make you go your own way," she said. "We all started this journey together. Seems to me we should end it that way."

The plain good sense of this came as a relief to the crowd after all that talk of God and the Devil. There were murmurs of approval here and there, and several people began to depart. The drama was over. they had work to do: wheels to fix, stew to stir. But the righteous Whitney was not about to lose his congregation without one last warning.

"This is a dangerous man!" he growled. He threw the medallion to the din, and ground his heel upon it. "He'll drag us down into Hell with him."

"He ain't going' to drag us anyplace, Enoch," Marsha said. "Now ya just go cool off, huh?"

Whitney cast a sour glance in Harmon's direction. "I'll be watchin'

you," he said.

"I'm comforted," Harmon replied, which won a little laugh from Marsha. As if the sound of laughter appalled him, Whitney hurried away, pushing through the crowd, muttering as he went.