High clouds drove across the dark toward abiding calm. Ben Cory watched them rolling under west wind down a winter sky, until his father's voice drew him back into the pool of firelight and candleshine. The moment's alarm of loneliness lingered, another occasion when the self disturbed by the not-self desires the assurance of boundaries. Where does the self end and the universe begin? Ben knew the inquiry to be a corridor where many doors open on darkness but not all. Most of the days of that February had been whitely brilliant, the nights heavy with malignant doubts of wartime. Outside Deerfield's palisade, where one did not go alone, Ben at fourteen could never forget the enemy, the Others. Indians and French-or say danger itself, a thing of the mind harsh as an arrow in the flesh. In the cave of darkness that was the garret at bedtime, with Reuben's breath tickling his shoulder, the thought of the Others often entered behind Ben Cory's eyes. If sleep refused him his parents' talk might be recalled, and that sense of the Others, the quiet-footed, would become a commentary like secret laughter. They could laugh, those bronze people of the wilderness; they could laugh and cry, as wolves do. On this evening of the twenty-ninth of February, 1704, snow was drifted mightily against Deerfield's palisade, crusted and frozen over. All winter the village had shivered to warnings: the French might try it. Governor Dudley sent reinforcements as generously as other commitments of a scared Massachusetts would allow; then the waiting, and the snow. Ben's father had recently received a letter from Great-uncle John Kenny of Roxbury. As he discussed it that evening with Ben's mother, the boys could listen. From an Englishman who escaped Port Royal and reached Boston, Mr. Kenny had learned the French were friendlier than ever with the Abenaki tribes of Acadia. Joseph Cory read aloud: "I am moved to wonder whether we may ever know a time when the good works of men shall be no longer set at naught by embroilments of faction and credo, or by maneuvering of states and principalities. It is a sorry thing that a man should refrain from speaking his mind, overborne by the righteous who forget it was said: Be not righteous overmuch: Ecclesiastes vii; 16. I hate no man for that he believeth in other fashion than I do, be he Anabaptist, Quaker, Papist, I care nothing. He hath his light, so let me live by mine own." Ben's mother was sewing, in her favorite small chair by the fireplace, the day's work never quite ended, candlelight mild on her dark face and her fingers that hurried because she was troubled. "Truly, Joseph, he displayeth much pride." "Is it wrong, Adna, a man should be proud? Brave too-nay, reckless, seeing the letter might have fallen in the wrong hands." "But-to make himself, as it were, judge of all things...." Ben glanced at the enigma of his younger brother's face, wondering which view Reuben would share.