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grass and then she prepared to let her happiness go.
    He took off his broad-brimmed black hat with one swipe of his hand and bowed. Then he extended the snapdragons and pussy willows. “Miss Keim, if I may, I have come to pay you a visit long overdue.”
    She had told herself not to smile but she couldn’t help but respond to his enthusiasm and energy with anything less. She took the bouquet from his hand and pressed it to her face. “Thank you, Nathaniel.”
    “My pleasure.”
    “Nathaniel—”
    He heard the catch in her voice and immediately his smile faded. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted me to come.”
    “It’s not that.”
    “Then what?”
    “Nathaniel, please go across the pasture to the sugar maples. My father is there. He needs your help.”
    “Of course. Is something wrong?”
    “He is—he is bringing Charlie Preston down from a tree.”
    “What?”
    “They…hung him…Nathaniel…”
    So the change came to his face and soul just as she knew it would. He stared at her for several moments, looked at Levi for several more, then began to walk quickly and in a straight line for the trees. She sank her head into her brother’s shoulder.
    “His eyes changed, Levi.”
    “Of course they’ve changed. He will feel responsible. He will wish he had done more. That he had chased after them like he wanted to.”
    “The boy who climbed out of the buggy, the boy who came to see me is gone. He’s gone, Levi.”
    Her brother did not respond.
    Five minutes later they watched their father and Nathaniel coming across the field carrying Charlie’s body between them. Nathaniel had his back to them holding the shoulders, while their father had the feet. Nathaniel had taken off his shirt and placed it on Charlie, running the dead man’s arms through the sleeves and buttoning it, so that the shirt, too large, fell all the way to his knees and covered most of his body in white.
    They took him to a room at the back of the house where firewood was stored out of the rain, a room cool and rich with the smell of earth and trees. It had been Lyndel’s favorite room to hide in when she was a girl, and because Levi knew this she was always the first one he caught among their friends and neighbors. Now they gently laid Charlie on a long table and folded his arms on his chest over Nathaniel’s shirt. There was a minute of silent prayer before they left. Constantly running her fingers over her eyes to clear them Lyndel caught glimpses of her father, her brother, and Nathaniel and realized she wasn’t the only one struggling with the pain of this death. Yet she felt something else thrusting itself up through her shock and anguish that surprised her with its strength and heat.
    I said I would protect him. We all said we would protect him.
    “I betrayed him!” she blurted.
    Her father snapped his head around to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
    “I promised him. From the very beginning I promised Charlie I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.”
    “My daughter—”
    “You promised too! You stood there at the barn door and said I could trust you. But you told the others. And one of the others told the sheriff.”
    “Of course you can trust me.”
    Lyndel could feel the blood in her face as she curled her hands into fists. “You gave him up to the slave drivers without a fight.”
    Her father’s face turned white. “We are a people of peace. It’s not our way to resort to guns or violence. I have an oath to fulfill as an Amish bishop.”
    “What about your oath to me? Does it mean more to you to be a bishop than to be a faithful father?”
    “My Lyndel, I love you—”
    “You said I could trust you. You said we would protect him. We failed him! And in failing him, we have failed God!”
    Her father took Lyndel’s hand and looked into her face.
    “Listen to me. It will be an Amish funeral. I will discuss this with the leadership. We will lay his body to rest tomorrow. I must let Sheriff Jackson know what has