In the woods, after they had gone a long way from the road, Jesse stopped in an opening among the trees where a clearing, overgrown with small bushes, ran up from the creek.  He was still silent but began at once to erect a heap of dry sticks which he presently set afire.  The boy sat on the ground with the lamb in his arms.  His imagination began to invest every movement of the old man with significance and he became every moment more afraid.  “I must put the blood of the lamb on the head of the boy,” Jesse muttered when the sticks had begun to blaze greedily, and taking a long knife from his pocket he turned and walked rapidly across the clearing toward David.

Terror seized upon the soul of the boy.  He was sick with it.  For a moment he sat perfectly still and then his body stiffened and he sprang to his feet.  His face became as white as the fleece of the lamb that, now finding itself suddenly released, ran down the hill.  David ran also.  Fear made his feet fly.  Over the low bushes and logs he leaped frantically.  As he ran he put his hand into his pocket and took out the branched stick from which the sling for shooting squirrels was suspended.  When he came to the creek that was shallow and splashed down over the stones, he dashed into the water and turned to look back, and when he saw his grandfather still running toward him with the long knife held tightly in his hand he did not hesitate, but reaching down, selected a stone and put it in the sling.  With all his strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands and the stone whistled through the air.  It hit Jesse, who had entirely forgotten the boy and was pursuing the lamb, squarely in the head.  With a groan he pitched forward and fell almost at the boy’s feet.  When David saw that he lay still and that he was apparently dead, his fright increased immeasurably.  It became an insane panic.

With a cry he turned and ran off through the woods weeping convulsively.  “I don’t care—­I killed him, but I don’t care,” he sobbed.  As he ran on and on he decided suddenly that he would never go back again to the Bentley farms or to the town of Winesburg.  “I have killed the man of God and now I will myself be a man and go into the world,” he said stoutly as he stopped running and walked rapidly down a road that followed the windings of Wine Creek as it ran through fields and forests into the west.

On the ground by the creek Jesse Bentley moved uneasily about.  He groaned and opened his eyes.  For a long time he lay perfectly still and looked at the sky.  When at last he got to his feet, his mind was confused and he was not surprised by the boy’s disappearance.  By the roadside he sat down on a log and began to talk about God.  That is all they ever got out of him.  Whenever David’s name was mentioned he looked vaguely at the sky and said that a messenger from God had taken the boy.  “It happened because I was too greedy for glory,” he declared, and would have no more to say in the matter.