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hoped that Benjamin Nab would tell another story about their parents, but the man remained silent as the trees turned into shadows, then dark silhouettes, against the sky.
     
    “Where are we going?” Ren finally asked.
     
    “You’ll find out soon enough.”
     
    “I have to use the privy.”
     
    Benjamin Nab stopped. He pulled his hair back and retied it, then gestured to the woods. “There’s your privy.”
     
    Ren stepped tentatively into the underbrush just beyond the road.
     
    “Not too far,” said Benjamin. “There’s things in the forest that might carry you off.”
     
    Ren listened to the sound of the trees as he unbuttoned his trousers. The breeze was stirring, the stars just starting to show themselves. The boy could hear the scraping of the branches overhead, the groan of a trunk as it swayed. Something scattered on his left, and he jumped to his feet, crashing into thorns that grabbed at his hair as he rushed back to the road.
     
    When he pushed through the leaves, Benjamin was waiting, his hands clasped behind him and his long coat swinging in the wind. He was looking at the tops of the trees. Ren followed his gaze and saw a farmhouse on a hill above, and a trail leading to a barn some distance from the road. No light came from the windows, but there was still a bit of smoke drifting from the chimney. A fire nearly out.
     
    Benjamin straightened Ren’s jacket. He looked the boy up and down.
     
    “Fix your trousers.”
     
    Ren buttoned up the fly and tied the bit of rope that held his pants together.
     
    “No talking,” said Benjamin. “You just keep quiet. And watch me. And learn.” With that he took hold of Ren’s hand and marched up the path to the farmhouse.
     
    It was a small building, with a vegetable garden and five or six acres behind it. The roof was made of slate and the chimney was set in the middle of the house. There was a rosebush by the door, a few tight buds still holding on in the chill. Benjamin knocked, and after a few minutes a candle appeared at one of the windows, and then the sash was up, and the barrel of a shotgun slid out and pointed at them.
     
    Benjamin nodded at the gun as if it were a person. “We’re traveling to Wenham, and we seem to have lost our way on the road. I was hoping that you’d let us spend the night in your barn.”
     
    “I don’t let strangers on to my property, day or night,” said a man’s voice. “Be off.”
     
    “I’d be glad to pay you for your trouble,” said Benjamin, and he made a show of searching his pockets. “It’s the boy I’m worried about. I’m afraid to take him any farther this way in the dark. We’ve been going all day, and he’s awful tired.”
     
    As he said this, Benjamin kicked Ren behind the knees. The boy stumbled to the ground in front of the window, the shotgun inches from his head.
     
    “Jim.” There was a woman’s voice. Ren looked up and saw her face in the candlelight. She had brown hair, plaited in braids, and a shawl pulled over her nightgown. Her forehead touched the glass as she peered at them. She whispered something into the darkness of the house. There was a low murmur in return. The shotgun slid back inside the window.
     
    The door opened.
     
    “Please come in,” said the woman.
     
    Benjamin picked Ren up off the ground, dusted him off, took him by the elbow, and led him across the threshold. “We can’t thank you enough.”
     
    “Any Christian would do the same,” she said.
     
    The light from the candle was barely enough for them to see their way. Ren knocked into something that felt like a stool, and then something else that felt like the edge of a table. The woman put the candle down and lit another with the flame of the first. She lifted the second candle into a fixture that hung from the ceiling and covered it with a hurricane glass, sending a glow across the room, and it was then that Ren saw the farmer who had passed him over at Saint Anthony’s, standing by