"Weaker than you know. It'll pass. I saw the wolves last on Saturday. They scented something, I think, and drifted away."
"It's all so still under the sun, and warm—what? I thought this was Saturday."
"This is Monday, Ben. Yesterday was the Sabbath. I hadn't thought of that till now, when you began asking me about the time. It was yesterday your fever broke for good. These three days have been a hundred years. I've had much time to think, when there was nothing else I could do—mind the fire, gather more wood, then either think or go mad, but I've not gone mad. I have not prayed, Ben, since before dawn on the Friday morning."
"I don't know what I should say about that. Father said, just before he died—did you hear?—said that God is far away."
"And Mother's last prayer was not answered. She prayed, 'Deliver us from evil.' And mine have never been answered."
"But we can't know that."
"I can't say that I know anything, anything at all, except that I'm here with you, and the air has turned warm, and the Bay Path road must be somewhere a mile or so over yonder, and tomorrow we shall try for Roxbury."
"And that thou hast killed a wolf.... Ru, if I didn't see that carcass under my nose——"
"I never lied to you. Oh—tales for your fancy now and then."
"I know that. What did you do with the hide?"