Read Grantville Gazette, Volume 59 for Free Online Page B

And what I paid to rent that battery-powered flashlight for him to use, so he wouldn't make noise winding a spring? That wasn't cheap, I'll tell you."
    "It's not silver, it's stainless steel, and it's worth plenty. But he took it on the way out after the search came up dry, to make it look like a common grab for loot. Just in case."
    "Oh, a brilliant inspiration that was! It still put them on their guard!" Holz' finger shook. "And that common loot had better not show up anywhere around here."
    ****
    Once again, Al needed Claudette's steady wisdom.
    As he entered the old barn, she looked up from milking—the Mountain Top Baptists weren't the first farmers to discover that cows could get used to being milked at a decent hour. She just looked at him and waited.
    He had to stop and search for words. That was supposed to be easy for any preacher, let alone one with a doctorate. After half a minute or so, he started with the core of what was worrying him. "I'm starting to wonder if we're really going to bring this off. I wonder if our mission is even what we think it is."
    "Huh? That two-bit burglar didn't throw you that badly, did he? The things he grabbed from the kitchen won't be that hard to replace, just so we don't buy pewter—we need lead poisoning like a hole in the head. Is there something else eating at you?"
    "It's not what we lost, honeybunch, it's that we can get hit any time. I didn't see that, or maybe I had my head in the sand. When Joe gave us the farm to start a college with, I figured it put us far off the beaten track up here, that we weren't likely to be bothered. But now? All it takes is one ignorant crank who thinks he has the Only Truth. Suppose that had been an arsonist, or some psycho Anabaptist-hating ex-mercenary with a big sword? Or suppose it had been a gang of robbers after the books? There aren't enough of us here to keep up a watch around the clock, and even if there were, we've got a farm to run just to feed ourselves."
    "Speaking of that, let me finish milking Edna here while I think about it, before she gets upset with me, and then I've got to leave for work." She went back to the job at hand.
    "Sure, go ahead. And the farming and outside work really cut into what we're supposed to be doing, teaching and studying, trying to bring along a few more who can preach. With the few of us here, I really wonder if we can train enough to make a difference in the world, or draw new members. This is the seventeenth century, and a lot of people don't like us. You know what happened up-time. In England and the Continent we were here all the time, right back to the beginning, never mind what the mainline historians claim, but we barely hung on, below the radar. It was only in America that we really grew. I don't know. We're such a small ember here."
    "We are, but . . ." She worked in silence for a while. Finally she got up and moved the pail and stool aside, and patted Edna's side. "Someplace there's a key to this. I'll think on it when I've got a minute to myself, but we can manage without you for a few hours. What you should do is go into the chapel by yourself and pray over it. It's worked before. I'll tell everybody to leave you alone until you come out. Then we'll talk again."
    ****
    By the time Al finally came in, both dining room tables were nearly cleared, and the residents were setting up for the evening group study period under the light of the room's hanging chandelier. Katerina Friedeberger had been cooking that day; she brought back the soup and the last of the grilled cheese sandwiches from the kitchen, and Claudette set a place for him.
    John Stewart rested his crossed forearms on the table, and asked in the patiently practiced up-time English that he spoke when nothing distracted him from it, "Is it all clear in your mind, Brother Green? Do you know what we should do?"
    "Not all of it. I know there are some things we can do to protect ourselves better. We need to put our heads together about