A silence fell.  The little dog, sensitively aware of something wrong, whined uneasily, and pawed at Paul’s hand.  But Paul did not look down at him.  He stood, his bare feet wide apart, the empty pail in his hand, looking down the beautiful green slope of the pasture, golden now in the long rays from the sun poised low on the line of the mountains opposite.

Marise looked at him, seeing nothing in all the world but that tanned, freckled, anxious little face.  With what an utter unexpectedness did these moments of crisis spring on you; something vital there, and no warning, no chance to think.

“Anything the matter, Paul?” she said gently.

He nodded, silent.

“Anything you can tell Mother?” she asked, still more gently.

Paul said gruffly, “I don’t know:  it’s about Ralph Powers.  He was up here this afternoon.”  He looked down at his brown, bramble-scratched legs.

Marise’s imagination gave an unbridled leap of fear.  She had always felt something strange and abnormal about Ralph.  But she thought, “I mustn’t tyrannize over Paul, even by a too-waiting expectant silence,” and stooped over with the pretext of tying her shoe.  A lump came to her throat.  How terribly, helplessly, you cared about what came to your children!

When she lifted her head, Paul had come nearer her and was looking down at her, with troubled eyes.  “Say, Mother, he didn’t say not to tell you.  Do you suppose it would be fair?”

She made a great effort at loyalty and said, “I can’t tell, Paul.  You saw him.  You know better than I, if you think he meant you not to tell.  Try to remember if he said anything about it.”

Paul thought hard.  “You wouldn’t tell anybody?” he asked.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” she answered.

Paul sat down by her and drew a long breath.  “I don’t believe he would care, your knowing it, if you never told anybody else, nor said anything to him.  Mother, I was going along, up there by the big rock where the white birches grow, and I saw Ralph. . . .  He was in front of a sort of table he’d fixed up with a long piece of slate-stone, and he had some queer-shaped stones on it . . . oh, Mother . . . he was crying so, and talking to himself!  And when he saw me he got as mad!  And he told me about it, just as mad all the time, as though he was mad at me.  Mother, it’s an altar!

“An altar!” said Marise, stupidly, utterly disconcerted by the word, so totally other than what her fears had been foreboding.

“Yes, an altar, and he says the stones on it are idols, and he bows down and worships them, the way the Bible says it’s wicked to.”

Marise was too much astonished to open her lips.

Paul said, “Mother, Ralph says he hates God, and isn’t going to say his prayers to him any more.  He says God let his father and mother both get killed, and he don’t know what the devil could do any worse than that.  He said he started in having an altar to idols because he thought from what the Bible said that if you did you’d be so wicked lightning would strike you dead.  But it didn’t, and now he doesn’t believe anything.  So he’s going on, having idols because the Bible says not to.”