So they brought the dwarf home, carrying him for five torturous miles from a maple limb held at either end by Garth and Albert (his ankles and wrists bound, he was unceremoniously slung from the pole, like a carcass), and then laying him in the back of the pick-up truck. He had long since lost consciousness: but each time they checked his feeble heartbeat (for, if he had died, it would be wisest just to dump him into a gully) they saw that he was alive, and would probably remain so. . . . What a heavy little bastard he is, they exclaimed.

Because Gideon had saved his life Nightshade was always craven before him, and would possibly have adored him-as he adored Leah-had he not sensed Gideon's nature, and prudently shied away from him whenever they happened to see each other. But at the very sight of Leah-Leah striding into the room-though her hair was disheveled and she looked somewhat drawn-not quite herself-a moan escaped from Nightshade's lips, and he flung himself to the floor, and kissed it, in honor of the woman he took to be mistress of Bellefleur Manor.

Leah stared at the hunchback, stepping back from his desperate furious kissing; she stared, her lips parted, and it was a long moment before she looked up to her husband, who was watching her with a small calm malicious smile. "What-what is this," Leah whispered, clearly frightened. "Who is-"

Gideon gave the dwarf a little shove with his foot, pressing the heel of his boot against the hump. "Can't you see? Can't you guess?" he said. The color had flooded back into his face and he looked quite triumphant. "He's come a long distance to serve you."

"But who is- I don't understand-" Leah said, drawing back.

"Why, it's another lover, can't you see!"

"Another lover . . ."

Leah looked at Gideon, her face furrowed and her lips puckered as if she were tasting something vile.

"Another-!" she whispered. "But I have none now-"

IN TIME-IN A very short time-Leah came to find Nightshade delightful, and took him on as a special servant, her servant, since he was so clearly infatuated with her. With his immense shaggy head and his small eyes and the ugly hump between his shoulders he was, as she said, a piteous sight-a pitiable sight-and it would be cruel for them to turn him away. And then he was remarkably strong. He could lift things, force things, unscrew caps, scramble with enviable agility up a stepladder to make a difficult repair; he could carry, single-handedly, a guest's entire luggage into the house, showing no indication of strain except the minute trembling of his legs. Leah outfitted him in livery, and from somewhere he acquired straps, belts, buckles, and little leather pouches, and wooden boxes, which gave to his costume a quaint, gnomish look. (Though he was certainly not a troll, as Leah said repeatedly, often in amused anger: Bromwell's official definition was dwarf, and dwarf it must be.) He spoke rarely, and always with a fussy show of deference. Leah was Miss Leah, uttered in a half-swooning murmur, as he bowed before her, bent nearly double, a comical and somehow-or so Leah thought-a touching sight. He could play the mouth organ, and did simple magic tricks with buttons and coins, and even, when he was especially inspired, with kittens: making them disappear and reappear out of his sleeves or the shadowy interior of his jacket. (Sometimes, the children saw to their half-frightened astonishment, he made things-even kittens-appear when other things, unmistakably other things, had disappeared!-and it alarmed them, and kept them awake at night, worrying about the fate of the things that had disappeared.) Though he was so silent as to appear nearly mute, Leah had the idea that he was uncommonly intelligent, and that she could rely upon his judgment. His subservience was of course embarrassing-silly and annoying and distracting-but, in a way, flattering-and if he became too profuse in his adoration she had only to give him a playful kick, and he sobered at once. Despite his freakish appearance he was a remarkably dignified little man. . . . Leah liked him, she couldn't help herself. She pitied him, and was amused by him, and gratified by his loyalty to her, and she liked him very much, no matter how the other Bellefleurs-and even the children, and the servants-disapproved.

How odd it was, how annoying, how selfish, Leah thought, that they didn't care for poor Nightshade. Surely they must pity him?-surely they must be impressed by his indefatigable energy and good nature, and by his willingness (and his eagerness) to work at the castle for no salary, only for room and board? She could understand Gideon's contempt, for Gideon, she had always thought, was a severely limited person, as crippled imaginatively as Nightshade was crippled physically, and the sight of something wrong frightened him (she recalled what a whimpering coward he had been, at Germaine's birth, and how she had had to baby them both); but it was strange that the others disliked Nightshade too. Germaine shied away from him, and the older children, and grandmother Cornelia avoided looking at him, and it was said that the servants (led by the silly superstitious Edna, who would have to be replaced before long) whispered that he was a troll. . . . A troll, imagine, at Bellefleur, in these modern times! But it was unmistakable, the others' dislike of him, and Leah resolved not to give in to it: not to Germaine's silly fears, not to her sister-in-law's vague mumbled objections (for Lily didn't dare speak aloud in opposition to Leah: she was such a coward), not even to Gideon's disdain. In time, Leah thought, they will like him well enough, they'll like him as much as I do.

The first night great-aunt Veronica saw him, however, Leah couldn't help but be struck by something not only peculiar but, it seemed, irrevocable in the older woman's attitude. When Veronica descended the wide circular stairs, one beringed hand on the railing, the other grasping her heavy dark skirts in order to lift them slightly, to keep from tripping, she happened to see Nightshade (it was his first evening as Leah's "manservant," he was wearing his handsome little livery uniform) drawing a chair close to the fire for his mistress; and in that instant she froze, froze with one high-buttoned shoe uplifted, and her hand grasping the railing tightly. How very queerly aunt Veronica stared at Nightshade who, on account of his stooped-over posture, did not at first see her. It was only as he withdrew, backing out of the room, bowing, that he happened to lift his eyes to her . . . and, for a fraction of a moment, he too froze . . . and Leah, who would ordinarily have found all this amusing, caught a sense, a near-indefinable sense, of Veronica's and Nightshade's mutual alarm: not as if they knew each other, for it wasn't that simple, but that, instead (and this is very difficult to explain), what they were was kin; what each was called out to, and drew back from, what the other was. (And afterward Veronica sat leadenly at her place at dinner, pretending to sip her consomme, pushing food around on her plate as if the very sight of it nauseated her (for there was the pretense, with Veronica, that she was-despite her generous heft-a finicky eater), swallowing a few mouthfuls of claret before excusing herself and hurrying back upstairs to "retire" early.) Nor did the cats like him. Not Ginger and Tom, or Misty, or Tristram, or Minerva; least of all Mahalaleel, whom Nightshade tried to court, offering him fresh catnip (he carried various herbs wrapped in waxed paper carefully tied with string, in his several pouches and wooden boxes), but Mahalaleel kept his magisterial distance, and would not be tempted. Once Germaine came upon Nightshade in the dim, teakwood-lined reception room, stooped over more emphatically than usual, holding something in his gloved hand and calling Kitty-kitty-kitty, here kitty-kitty-kitty! in his high-pitched squeaking voice-and a moment later Mahalaleel, his back and tail bristling, bounded past the little man and ran out of the room. Nightshade paused, sniffed the herb in his hand, and followed along after the cat, calling Here kitty, here kitty, kitty-kitty-kitty in a tireless unoffended voice.

Automobiles.

It was in a handsome two-seater Buick, canary-yellow, with rakish wire-spoked wheels, that Garth and Little Goldie eloped, and in a smart little fire-engine-red Fiat with a cream-colored convertible top and polished hubcaps (a gift from Schaff for her recent birthday) that Christabel and Demuth Hodge eloped one fine autumn morning, driving, for brief periods during their gay, reckless, euphoric flight, at speeds of a hundred miles per hour despite the winding mountain roads. It was a supercharged Auburn, chalk-white, with gray upholstery and exposed exhaust pipes, of gleaming chromium, another sporty two-seater, that carried away, into the labyrinthian shadows of an unnamed foreign city, possibly Rome, the beautiful young actress "Yvette Bonner" in a film called Lost Love which was seen, in secret, by a number of the younger Bellefleurs (who speculated not only upon the identity of the actress-for was she Yolande, or did she merely seem to be Yolande?-but upon the probability of her having, in real life as well as on film, the tantalizingly cerebral and yet erotic relationship with the young mustached Frenchman who, in Lost Love, drove her so boldly and noisily away).

Many years ago (and there were sepia-tinted photographs to prove it) great-grandfather Jeremiah, for all his ill-luck and despondency, nevertheless owned one of the first motorcars in the area, a gaily decorated Peugeot in which passengers (including great-grandmother Elvira in a richly flowered and wide-brimmed hat that tied firmly beneath the chin) sat facing one another. In styling the Peugeot closely resembled a horse-drawn carriage, open to the wind, with bicycle-sized wire wheels and a single headlight. (Its painted arabesques, which looked, even as reproduced in a poor photograph, extremely delicate and beautiful, put Germaine in mind of certain of great-aunt Matilde's quilts.) Noel and Hiram and Jean-Pierre shared, for a while, before their father's creditors claimed it, a wonderful little Peugeot Bebe: it seated only one person comfortably, was noisy and dangerous and almost comically gaudy (with a turquoise leather seat and turquoise trim about the wheels, contrasting with the rich russet wood of the wheels; and a black-and-gold-striped body; and four oversized brass lamps; and a brass horn that gave a loud ribald sound designed to terrify horses on the road), and had the distinction of being the only car of its kind in the entire state at that time. If Hiram, as an older man, never cared for motorcars and refused to learn to drive (and disliked even the family limousine though it was driven by a highly competent chauffeur) it was possibly because he still remembered the Peugeot Bebe with great affection, and was susceptible, from time to time, to black moods, pitch-black airless moods, reminiscent of the one he suffered after the car was sold at auction. (Why love anything if you're going to lose it, why love anyone, he frequently mused, if there's a possibility you will lose her. . . . And so he hadn't, it must be said, very seriously loved his young wife, nor had he much love for the unfortunate Vernon, whose death was as much an embarrassment to him (for he had known the boy would make a fool of himself!) as a source of paternal grief.) It might have been Stanton Pym's Morris Bullnose, as much as his audacious attempt to marry, and to survive marrying, a Bellefleur heiress, that infuriated Della's family; for though the Bullnose was a small car, and cost considerably less than the family's cars at that time (a six-cylinder Napier and a Pierce-Arrow saloon car), its pert sporty air, and its brass fixtures, struck Della's brothers and cousins as impertinent and inappropriate for a junior officer of a Nautauga Falls bank. (After Stanton's death Della sold the car at once. Both Noel and a cousin named Lawrence offered to buy it from her-and to pay a respectable sum-but Della refused. I would rather drive it into Lake Noir and sink along with it, she said, than sell it to either of you.) Great-aunt Veronica's fiance Ragner Norst, who called himself a count and may in fact have been one, despite the Bellefleurs' doubts (for he had been, after all, or claimed to have been, an intimate friend of the famous Count Zborowski-the very Zborowski who owned so much property in New York, and entertained lavishly in Paris, and was killed in a freak accident while driving his splendid Mercedes in a ferocious race in the South of France) drove a most impressive Lancia Lambda, black as a hearse, stately, regal, with a monocoque body and independent front suspension-which the Bellefleurs envied, though they suspected Norst had acquired it secondhand: it had curious scratches on its doors, as well as its front fenders, and its thick gunmetal-gray cushions gave off an odor not unlike that of a stagnant pond, or a tomb.

For many years the Bellefleurs drove only one "good" car-a maroon Cadillac with steel-spoked wheels, one of the first of the Fleetwood Broughams (it had carpeted foot rests and adjustable swivel-type reading lamps and mahogany fixtures, among other things) and it was this car, rather badly in need of repainting, that Gideon was given as a wedding present, so that he might drive his young bride to their secret honeymoon hotel in style: but at that time Gideon, so enamored of horses, and in any case so enamored of Leah, hardly appreciated the automobile's 7030 c.c. V8 engine, which carried them along noiselessly though they drove, often without quite knowing it, at high speeds. After the ignominious loss of the plum-colored Pierce-Arrow at Paie-des-Sables, Gideon acquired, through his Port Oriskany friend Benjamin Stone (the son of the philanthropist Waltham Stone who had made his fortune in the production of washing machines), a number of remarkable cars-the magnificent Hispano-Suiza; rebuilt Aston-Martin; a bottle-green Bentley (which Lord Dunraven very much admired); and, somewhat later, at about the time of the migrant workers' strike, a white Rolls-Royce coupe with a virtually soundless engine-by far Gideon's favorite car, at least up until the time of his accident.

Rolls, of course, was the family's near-unanimous choice for their largest car; and so, as the Bellefleur fortune swelled, they acquired, at Leah's particular insistence, a six-seater Silver Ghost with every imaginable feature-leather upholstery, hand-painted panels, silver ashtrays, silver-framed mirrors, gold fittings, and thick fur (it was a novelty fur-Alaskan wolf) carpeting: a most impressive sight, and a fittingly impressive sight, to appear at the ugly portals of the Powhatassie State Correctional Facility to bear away poor meek ashen-faced Jean-Pierre II, who was at last deemed worthy of a pardon by the governor of the state. But it was not the Rolls, of course, Leah wished to take, as, accompanied by her manservant, Nightshade, and Germaine, and young Jasper (who was developing so rapidly, who seemed to know, now, as much about the estate's finances as Hiram himself, and nearly as much as Leah), she drove south in a fruitless and really quite ill-advised attempt to locate, and bring back, her erring daughter Christabel: for that purpose Leah drove her own car, an austere, practical Nash sedan which, she calculated, would never draw attention to itself or its occupants. But of course she never found Christabel and her lover Demuth, nor did the authorities ever find the Fiat, though Edgar had reported it missing at once. (What a generous gift it had been, that bright red coupe with its cream-colored top and its dazzlingly shiny hubcaps!-and all, as the elder Mrs. Schaff said bitterly, to provide a common whore with the means of flight from her husband and family; and who knows but that the Fiat hadn't inspired the little whore's love affair, as well as her escape from Schaff Hall?) Over the years there had been, not in strict chronological order (for the Bellefleurs, reminiscing, quite shamelessly jumbled "chronological" order-indeed, to Germaine's way of thinking, they had a lofty contempt for it), a Packard limousine, and a Pierce-Arrow saloon car, and a green Stutz-Bearcat, and something called a Scripps-Booth (which no one seemed to remember); insurance records showed a Prosper-Lambert, evidently a French car, with acetylene gas lamps and seat covers of dyed kid. There was a Dodge, and a La Salle; there were several Fords including two Model-A's, which were among the hardiest of the Bellefleur cars. Interest in automobiles varied wildly among the Bellefleurs, and was not consistent, in any single individual, throughout a lifetime: though Ewan professed to have little genuine concern for what he drove, so long as it got him from place to place quickly and economically. He viewed with something like alarm his brother Gideon's sudden infatuation with cars, which seemed to him less plausible than Gideon's earlier infatuation with horses, if only because Gideon was now a fully mature man, and no longer an impulsive boy.

Ewan himself was content to drive a good, solid, handsome American car, a Packard, though he bought for his favorite mistress (the divorcee Rosalind Manx, who called herself a "singer-actress'), through Gideon's and Benjamin Stone's assistance, a showy blue Jaguar E-type with dyed rabbit-fur upholstery and silver fixtures, which was often seen tearing along even the narrowest of Nautauga Falls streets, evidently oblivious to (and immune from) traffic police. (Ewan would not have minded if Lily had learned to drive, though he didn't encourage it, and of course hadn't time to teach her himself: but he evidently expressed amused gratification when Albert, who had tried to teach his mother to drive Leah's Nash, pronounced her hopeless.) Albert himself owned a Chevrolet Caprice which was one day to sideswipe a tenant farmer's pick-up truck, injuring Albert and killing the farmer outright; Jasper drove a smart, practical Ford, with few frills, and Morna was to one day acquire, as her birthday present from a new husband, a handsome chocolate-brown Porsche. Bromwell was never to acquire a car, nor was he even to learn how to drive.

The oldest automobile the Bellefleurs owned, at about the time of Germaine's birth, was grandmother Della's black two-door Ford, a gift from a sympathetic uncle-in-law (one of Elvira's brothers) so that she might, if she wished, drive herself about: but of course Della never learned to drive, and the car remained, decade after decade, unused, its battery dead, swallows nesting in its cushions, in the old carriage house behind the red-brick house in Bushkill's Ferry. Leah, as a girl, had tried unsuccessfully to start it; she had nagged Della about getting it serviced, and in working order-for, if it worked, her boy friend Nicholas Fuhr had offered to give her lessons-and it might be fun, didn't Della think, if the two of them went for Sunday drives along the river, or southward out of the mountains on an overnight trip, for a change of scene?

"Whyever would you want a change of scene," Della asked irritably (for her tomboyish daughter had such a strident, aggressive voice), "aren't things troublesome enough here?"

So the old black Ford remained in the carriage house, graceless, unwanted, rusting in leprous patches, covered over with a film of dust and pigeon- and swallow-droppings-and so it remains, in fact, until this very day.

The Demon.

In the mountains, in those days long ago, Jedediah Bellefleur wandered, a penitent. And when he saw that a demon had come to dwell in Henofer's cabin, that the demon had pushed himself inside the old man's grizzled chest and now stared boldly out of the old man's eyes-boldly and mockingly, as if daring Jedediah to recognize him!-he knew that he must not suffer the creature to live.

I know you, he whispered, advancing upon him.

The demon blinked and stared. Henofer's face had undergone many changes, perhaps it was already the face of a dead man, astonishingly aged. Though Jedediah had lived on the other side of the mountain for only a year or two or three, in that period of time Henofer had become an old man, and it was possible that his infirmity allowed the demon to slip into his body.

Of course you know me, the demon said.

That isn't his voice, Jedediah said, smiling. You can't quite imitate his voice.

His-? Whose? What do you mean?

The old man. Henofer. You didn't know him, Jedediah said. So you can't imitate his voice. You can't deceive me.

What do you mean? the demon said. In a pretense of fear he began to stammer. I'm Mack-you know me-it's Mack, Mack Henofer-for God's sake, Jedediah, are you joking? But you never joke- Jedediah looked around the clearing. There was Henofer's sway-backed horse, and his mule; his cowardly hound lay with his belly pressed flat against the ground and his ragged tail limply wagging, as if, having made peace with his master's murderer, he now wished to make peace with his master's avenger.

On a crude wooden rack by the doorway of Henofer's cabin there were several hides-bloodstained and ragged and unrecognizable-raccoons, foxes, beavers, squirrels, bobcats? The sight of them was a surprise.

I didn't know you could work the trap lines, Jedediah said, eying the creature with a sly smile.

Where Henofer would have laughed his wheezy blustery laugh, the demon, again pretending to be frightened, stared at Jedediah and moved his lips silently. A prayer to the Devil, perhaps, but Jedediah did not draw away.

You can't live on this mountain. This is a Holy Mountain, Jedediah said calmly. Henofer might have welcomed you-probably did-probably invited you to stay the night and drink with him and listen to his foul disgusting stories-yes?-but he never understood the nature of this mountain and he deserved to die. But you: you can't stay here. God will not tolerate it.

Henofer's lips parted in a queer gaping grin. It was not Henofer's smile but the demon's, and it bore no resemblance at all to the old man's.

You aren't well, Jedediah, the demon said. And then tried to offer him a drink-asked him to come inside that shanty, and have a drink-but God distressed him at that moment with a fit of coughing that left his blubbery lips wet with dark spittle.

Jedediah stood his ground, waiting. Though he harbored no fear of the Devil his insides were trembling and he had to fight the desire to join old Henofer in that wracking terrible cough.

The hound began to bay, its stump of a tail flopping about.

Jedediah wondered-Was there a demon, a dog-demon, coiled up inside that sorry creature?-would it too have to be destroyed? Or was the dog untouched, deemed by the Prince of Darkness as too lowly to be contaminated?

THOUGH GOD REFUSED still to show His face to Jedediah He made it known that Jedediah was the means by which His message would be broadcast. The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured. And again, louder, in a terrible bugle-blast of a voice: The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured. So the Lord God has spoken.

As penance for having raised his voice on the Holy Mountain Jedediah was to wander for an unfixed number of days, or weeks, or months-God would instruct him more specifically-and if his camp should be destroyed, if wild creatures should devour his vegetable garden and thieves break into his cabin and plunder it, and set fire to it, God's will be done. The jaws devour, the jaws are devoured.

There was a paradox in God's teaching. For though Jedediah had been chosen (and, again, it was difficult to discern God's wrath from His love) nevertheless he was forbidden to leave the mountains: he must, for instance, never leave the sight of Mount Blanc. When he lay down to sleep, having resisted sleep for as long as possible (for that too was part of God's instruction), he must face the mountain; and when he opened his eyes in the morning the mountain must be the first thing he saw-the first image to fill his stupefied consciousness. On those mornings when the great mountain was obscured by mist Jedediah lay paralyzed, blinking as if the entire world had vanished in his sleep.

He preached to the few people he encountered. Trappers like old Henofer; a party of hunters (how smartly dressed they were, how costly their shotguns and rifles and gear must have been!-they smiled upon Jedediah pityingly, yet with a kind of courteous patience; but their Indian guide-a tall big-stomached Mohawk who wore a white man's hat and carried a rifle heavy with silver ornamentation-fixed him with an unmistakable contemptuous stare); a settlement of four families on the south bank of the Nautauga, near a nameless crossroads (they frowned and grinned and jabbered at him, finally, in a foreign tongue, which he knew was not French, and which he could not hope to comprehend without God's grace). He approached a contingent of soldiers walking in loose columns along a dusty road, but they had no time for him, and their officer playfully-it may have been seriously-aimed his rifle at Jedediah's feet, and bade him begone into the woods before an "accident" took place. Nor had he any more luck with a group of men, working with oxen and mules, who appeared to be digging a canal from east to west, out of nowhere and into nowhere, a ludicrous blasphemy in the sight of God (for why build a canal when the mountains were so richly veined with lakes and rivers?-why disfigure God's landscape on a human, vainglorious whim?)-many of the men did not understand English, and even those who seemed to be speaking English did not understand Jedediah, and soon grew impatient with him, and drove him back into the woods with rocks and chunks of mud and obscene taunting shouts. All these humiliations Jedediah endured for God's sake, and in full expectation that God should someday soon reward him. For he was, after all, God's servant: all that had been Jedediah Bellefleur was swallowed up in God.

THE JAWS DEVOUR, the jaws are devoured. But the forces of darkness did not want this message taught. And so Jedediah was aware of God's enemies, and of his own father's spies, watching him from the shadows at the edges of clearings, from behind rocks, from inside crude rotting shelters that appeared to be abandoned but which he dared not approach, not even in the most ferocious of rainstorms. Sometimes it was unclear, which were God's enemies and which were his own: his father (whose name Jedediah had temporarily forgotten though he could see, in his troubled dreams, the wicked old man's face as vividly as if it floated before him) was perhaps an enemy of God, but then he had always seemed too caught up with the vanities of the world, too busy, to care enough about God to actively oppose him: or was this merely an aspect of the old sinner's cunning? It was true that he had repudiated Roman Catholicism when he repudiated his homeland, and his mother tongue, and set his face to the West, and he had sloughed off this corrupt devil-ridden religion as easily as if he had done no more than wash his hands; and of course that must have pleased God. But he had erected no other belief in place of Catholicism, so far as Jedediah knew. He worshipped money. Political power, gambling, land speculation, horses, women, businesses of one kind or another-Henofer had told him many things, Jedediah remembered very little-but in the end only money, everything was transformed into money: money was his God. And was that God identical with Satan himself?

The old man, the wicked old man, wanted Jedediah to return to the flatland. So that he might marry, and propagate his kind; so that he might, like his brother Louis, bring sons into the world, to continue the Bellefleur name, and the Bellefleur worship of money. (Which was-or was it?-identical with the worship of Satan.) Sometimes, Jedediah rather wearily thought, the money-worshippers were too obsessed with their struggles to devour one another to think, even, of the Devil-they would have had no time for Mammon himself.

Still, there were enemies, enemies whose faces he never saw, but whose presences he sensed: at times, on windless nights, he could even hear their breathing. Shadows at the edges of clearings . . . shadows that came to life, stirring grouse and pheasants into terrified flight, sending rabbits across Jedediah's panicked field of vision. . . . Behind each of the larger pines a man might easily hide, if he were very cautious, and when Jedediah turned his back he might lean out to stare at him. These spies were probably in his father's pay. For it was not logical, Jedediah supposed, after long brooding, that mere strangers should care so much about him; and if there were devils (though could there, on the Holy Mountain, even in sight of the Holy Mountain, be devils?-would God permit such a blasphemy?), devils of course were bodiless, or so Jedediah understood, and would not need to hide behind trees or rocks.

That a devil might force himself into a man's body, and dwell inside that body, and wreak evil from within it-Jedediah hadn't comprehended at that time.

So he feared the presences, and traveled at night in order to confuse them, and hid during the day, as best he could (for sometimes he was overtaken by a painful hacking cough that seemed to be tearing his lungs out, and surely the creatures who spied upon him heard); and he tried to keep his heart alive with a constant prayer to God which his lips uttered at all times. My God, my Lord and my God, blessed be Thy name, blessed be Thy kingdom, and Thy will, and Thine enemies ground underfoot. . . .

One day, someone whispered in his ear, close against his ear, breathing warmly and tickling with her tongue, one day, Jedediah, you know what's going to happen?-they're going to jump at you from behind, and overpower you, no matter how you struggle and howl with rage, and they're going to carry you back down to home-hanging from a pole, maybe, like a gutted deer-and you'll wake up on a floor with them standing around gaping and grinning at you-poking you with a foot-Is that Jedediah Bellefleur who climbed into the sky looking for God-! Why, isn't he a sight, now! Scrawny and puny and sick and lousy (for you do have lice, that's a louse at this very moment crawling up the back of your neck!) and worm-ridden too (for you do, you know, have worms-you might not like to think of it, and you surely refuse to examine your hard little bloody droppings, but even so, my boy, even so!)-isn't he a sight-as if any self-respecting God would give a good goddamn for him. And would any woman marry him? Have babies by him? Oh, what a joke! God's been laughing up His sleeve for eighteen years now! And she skittered away, shrieking with laughter, before Jedediah could lay hands on her.

In his wanderings, before he came upon Mack Henofer's camp, and saw what had happened there, Jedediah suffered many ugly sights. One day he stepped out of the blazing tide of noon into the darkness of a forest that rose out of marshy, spongy land, and saw a cannibal Indian seated before a small fire, cross-legged, smoking a pipe, clothed in what appeared to be snakeskins-while all about him, in small tumbled-over mounds, were the skulls and bones of human beings. They were human bones, most assuredly they were human! And the snakeskins, Jedediah saw to his terror, were not skins at all but living snakes: living snakes that coiled and hissed about the brave's powerful naked body. (The snakes appeared aware of Jedediah's intrusion, but the Indian-vacant-eyed, expressionless, puffing soundlessly on his pipe-stared past him.) Long after Jedediah fled that hellish vision, for days and weeks afterward, he was to remember the horror of the heaped-up skulls and bones, and the thick-bodied hissing snakes, and most of all the Indian's stony impassivity. . . . Hadn't Jedediah heard, as a boy, that the cannibals among the Iroquois tribes had been exterminated, or converted to Christianity? And how was it possible that the Indian should be clad in living snakes?

(The evil of the pagan Indians, Jedediah thought, was an evil that came before the white man's-before the white man's evil, or his good. It came before history itself. Perhaps even before God.) And one day he saw a doe beset by dogs, farmers' dogs running loose in a pack, snarling and yipping in a frenzy as they tore her apart-tore at her immense swollen belly, where she carried a fetus that would have been dropped in a week or two: he saw, and he fled, covering his ears, his ceaseless prayer to God rising to an involuntary shout. My Lord and my God, my Lord and my God, have mercy. . . .

And strangest of all he saw, suspended in a dark swamp pond, fringed with rushes and cattails and water willow, a queer white floating face: a stranger's face in which the eyes were so colorless as to be nearly indistinct; and the chin, beardless, melted away into nothing. A human face, yet with less substance than the skulls of the cannibal Indian. It was strange, too, that the pond should be so lightless, so brackish, since it was probably only a few feet deep, and fed by a fresh-running brook. But Jedediah could not see its bottom. He saw only the ghostly floating face with its weak melting-away chin and its helpless smudged eyes, and he drew back in revulsion as well as in alarm.

And then one day, without intending it, he came upon Mack Henofer's campsite, and saw at once, in the first moment of the old man's shouted greeting and the dog's yipping, that Henofer had been plundered, his soul laid waste, his physical being taken over by a demon. How terrifying it was, to lift his eyes to Henofer's and to see, not Henofer's eyes at all, but those of a demon. . . .

"Jedediah! Jedediah Bellefleur! Is that you?"

He had known Henofer was a spy of his father's, a paid spy, but he had found it in his heart to forgive him; for vengeance is God's, after all. But now Henofer himself had been eradicated and what stared out at him from the old man's rheumy eyes was not even human.

"Jedediah Bellefleur," the demon crowed in triumph, before he understood that Jedediah had found him out, "aren't you a surprise on this side of the mountain!-aren't you a sight! Or is that even you, my boy? You look so different! My eyes, these days, they been giving me trouble-especially in the sun like this-Jedediah? Why don't you answer? You're thirsty, aren't you? Hungry? Is that you, looking so strange?"

He extended a broad dirty hand for Jedediah to shake, but Jedediah stood his ground. I know who you are, he whispered.

The Death of Stanton Pym.

In his smart little imported car, a two-seater Morris Bullnose with brass fixtures and aqua finish and aqua-and-orange spoked wheels, and its black convertible top rarely up, even in troubled weather (for he liked, the Bellefleurs saw, to be observed driving through Bellefleur Village on his way to the lakeshore road and the manor-Stanton Pym in a candy-striped sports coat and a pert straw hat with a red band, a bookkeeper's son and a canal digger's grandson courting in public the daughter of a man who, had he wished, might claim blood ties with one of France's oldest noble families), maneuvering the sporty car with a boyish self-consciousness along the graveled curves, as if confident he were being watched by envious eyes. Della's suitor appeared on Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally on Wednesday evenings to take her for long dusty drives around the lake, or to the Falls for dinner, or rowing on Silver Lake, or (on Wednesday evenings) to church services at the little white squat-steepled Methodist church on the Falls Road, or to the county fairgrounds where they might stroll hand in hand (so it was reported to the Bellefleurs) from one farm exhibit to another, and from one amusement to another, eating cotton candy and candied apples and hot buttered popcorn and drinking lemonade like any other young couple-except of course the match was doomed, and it was generally known that the suitor himself was doomed should he persist (but how could he, since he wasn't a stupid young man?) in the courtship.

The man who was to be Germaine's grandfather-her other grandfather-was, at the age of twenty-seven, already a bank officer in the First National Bank of Nautauga Falls. Apart from his natty dress (which of course was reserved for weekends) and his habit of repeating jokes judged to be only mildly amusing, he was a serious, even rather grave young man-wonderfully ambitious-bright and hard-working and wonderfully ambitious, as the bank's president told Noel Bellefleur one day. He had a talent for bank work and had specialized in mortgage loans. He knew a great deal. ". . . Is my financial situation part of what the young bastard knows?" Noel asked.

Of course it was clear that Stanton Pym was pursuing Della Bellefleur for her money and property-or for the promise of it, when she inherited; why otherwise would he have switched so readily, and, it seemed, so adroitly, from his courtship of the daughter of a Falls glove manufacturer to Della, when the glove manufacturer's business was sold at a loss?-though of course Stanton Pym withdrew from his pursuit of the girl long before the factory was actually sold, and before, even, rumors surfaced. It was simply the case, people said admiringly, that the bright young man knew a great deal.

At the First National Bank of Nautauga Falls Pym dressed in well-tailored and somber three-piece suits, and walked about with an almost military briskness and formality. If his grandfather had slaved in the pitiless midsummer sun to help build the Great Canal, and had died, of an undiagnosed internal hemorrhage, while lifting a shovel heavy with wet clay, at the age of forty-three; if his father had ruined his eyes and developed a hump between his shoulder blades, working a fourteen-hour day as an assistant bookkeeper for the largest textile mill in the region, and if he was dismissed after thirty years' service with no more than a token "pension"-exactly why, no one knew, though the dismissal might have had something to do with the man's failing eyesight and his perpetual melancholia-young Stanton seemed to know nothing of these indignities, and sometimes seemed, if questioned by people from his old neighborhood, to know nothing, with an almost charmingly innocent arrogance, of his family at all, living or dead. He gave his mother part of his salary, of course, and visited her as often as possible, but his new responsibilities-his new life-took up most of his time.

If, in the First National Bank with its sepulchral pretensions (though it was not the largest bank in Nautauga Falls it boasted a truly impressive neo-Georgian facade, and its floors, of simulated marble, were agreeably cold; it had cut- and frosted glass windows and, guarding the stairs to the vault, a pewter grille weighty as a medieval portcullis) young Stanton Pym dressed with admirable sobriety, and if he was careful to appear not only modest but self-effacing at the Methodist ceremonies he attended, at other times-Saturdays and Sundays in particular-he dressed in the latest men's styles and, had he been somewhat taller, and his eyes less close-set, he would have been one of the most striking of the "new" young men. (They sometimes appeared to be everywhere in those days-ambitious sons of farmers or even farmers' laborers-back from serving in the army, or back from a two-year course at business school, considerably taller than their parents, with firm frank handshakes and expectant smiles, and no intention whatsoever of living as their families had lived.) Pym had no more than two or three outfits for each season, but by switching vests, wearing different shoes (sometimes white, sometimes white-and-brown, sometimes brown, sometimes black, depending upon the season and the time of day) and different neckties and hats, he was able to give the impression of being fashionable as any of the wealthier young men. (Far more "fashionable," after all, than the Bellefleurs-for young Noel and his many cousins cared more for horses, hunting, fishing, boating and other masculine preoccupations than they did for society.) In summer months he wore white as often as possible-white trousers, smartly creased; white shoes; the red-and-white-striped blazer; even white gloves-despite its impracticality (for he had, after all, an automobile to contend with-first a Model-T, which demanded a fair amount of tinkering and adjusting, and then the little English car, acquired secondhand from one of the bank's customers). It was in this jaunty summer costume that Della Bellefleur first saw him, on the boardwalk at White Sulphur Springs.

He was escorting the glove manufacturer's daughter, whom Della of course knew, but knew slightly, and without any great warmth. A slender young man, no more than Della's height, a year or two younger than she, perhaps, with pomaded dark hair parted precisely in the center of his head, and a small dark mustache, like a fuzzy caterpillar, riding his short upper lip. That Sunday, he even carried a cane with an ebony knob. Della and Stanton Pym exchanged no more than a half-dozen words upon that occasion, for there were so many other people close about, in his party and in her own, but Della sensed immediately-and was never to be shaken from her conviction, not thirty years after Pym's death-that Pym, before being introduced to her, before knowing she was one of the two Bellefleur heiresses, had stared at her with a curious startled intensity as if . . . as if he recognized her . . . or saw something in her face. . . . As if, in that first moment, on the crowded White Sulphur Springs boardwalk, he knew.

(Perhaps it was not love at first sight, Della was one day to tell Germaine, as she turned the pages of her old photograph album, because I don't believe such a phenomenon exists . . . and if it does, it's immoral. But there is such a thing as immediate regard. Immediate sympathy. And intelligent and fully conscious awareness of another's worth.) At that time Della was twenty-nine years old. She was not a pretty woman, nor even-with her long nose and her prim censorious stare-a very attractive woman, but she carried herself proudly, and was known for her common sense and her reliability; her smile, when she smiled, could be appealing. It had been the family's intention for some years to marry her to a cousin-twice-removed who lived in the Falls with his widowed mother and spent his time speculating, fairly modestly, in real estate, but the match was stalemated by Della's and the cousin's silence on the subject. Do you actively dislike Elias, Della's mother and aunts interrogated her, is there anything about him that strikes you as unacceptable . . . ? Or are you simply being stubborn? Why don't you say something?

But Della said nothing, and though she and her cousin were brought together frequently, and encouraged to stroll about alone together, their "match" rested in a kind of apathetic equilibrium. They would be married someday-perhaps-but in the meantime there was no engagement. Della was spoken for, and no other suitors stepped forward, and the years passed, and though Della's mother and aunts discussed the situation tirelessly Della herself refused to discuss it at all. She quite liked her virginal status. She was not stubborn, as she frequently declared.

And then, suddenly, there was Stanton Pym.

How Pym knew about Della's conversion to Methodism, how he knew that she attended Wednesday evening services at the little country church (but not Sunday services: the family forbade that), how he managed to insinuate himself into her company there (for Della, being a Bellefleur, tended to hold herself somewhat apart from the others, even in her enthusiasm for their religion), how he managed to overcome her suspicions; no one knew. But suddenly they were "courting." They were said to be "sweet on each other." Noel learned that Pym went to the Methodist church only on Wednesdays, and that he had never been a serious churchgoer in the past; he learned that Pym had begun seeing Della only a week after withdrawing as a candidate for the hand of the glove manufacturer's daughter. He's after her, the Bellefleurs said, with an air of genuine surprise, he's actually after her. . . . Pym himself so misjudged Della's family attitude toward him that he was always extending his hand to the men when they happened to meet, smiling his perky little smile, commenting on the weather, telling jokes. (He very much enjoyed his own jokes and laughed richly at them, though never in the funereal recesses of the First National Bank.) The family disapproved, quite vocally, but of course Della paid them no mind: she went out with Pym in the Morris Bullnose, delighted as a young girl, her flower-bedecked hat tied firmly beneath her chin. The two of them were seen on the amusement rides at the state fair, they were seen rowing at Silver Lake, at sunset, and dining together by candlelight in the Nautauga House; Della even admitted, after close questioning, to having been introduced to Stanton's mother. (Of course the mother is impossible, Della said stiffly, she kept touching my arm and fawning on me and asking the most ridiculous questions-how many servants we had, how many rooms in the house, if it was true that my father had once been kidnapped-but, after all, Stanton is as critical of the poor woman as I am, and knows her faults thoroughly: and Stanton isn't anything like her. They are two quite separate and distinct persons.) When it was pointed out to Della-now by Elvira, now by her brothers Noel and Hiram, even by her sister Matilde-that the young man was pursuing her only because she was an heiress, she simply waved the notion away as if it were completely absurd.

You don't know Stanton as I do, she said.

STANTON WAS OF course to die an accidental death, as the witnesses and the coroner were to attest, yet long before the accident, long before the marriage, when he was warned of the possible dangers of marrying Della Bellefleur against her family's wishes, he waved the notion away as if it too were completely absurd. Della and I are in love, he said simply.

But the Bellefleurs-! Wasn't he afraid of them?

You don't understand, he would say, smiling. Della and I are in love. We know exactly what we are doing.

Though she was nearly thirty years old, and a fully mature woman, Della was sent away over the summer to visit with some of Elvira's relatives in another part of the state; and she and Pym were forbidden to see each other. They wrote letters faithfully but of course the letters were intercepted and opened, and their laconic, pious, possibly codified messages were read contemptuously aloud. It was noted that the words engagement and marriage were frequently used. And that they professed their love for each other: but always in a judicious, fairly formal manner. (The letters, at least, Della's family said, are not obscene.) While Della was away Pym suffered two unrelated accidents, both of them minor: the brakes of his automobile failed and he ran off the road, into a thicket of scrub pine; when he went to open his bedroom window one evening the window came loose, toppling over on him, and broken glass flew everywhere-cutting him, fortunately, only superficially. In telling Stanton Pym's story afterward, over the years, members of the Bellefleur family, with the exception, of course, of Della, usually emphasized the paradoxical fact that while Pym might very well have expected to be killed by Della's relatives, or at least badly beaten, he did die, in the end, an entirely accidental death-as if his fate were predetermined, and had nothing to do with Della at all.

Della returned at the end of the summer, and the couple became engaged at once. Pym was transferred to the new bank branch at Bushkill's Ferry, where he would be assistant manager, and he arranged to buy, with the aid of a considerable mortgage, an old but fairly attractive red-brick house with a clear view of the lake and, in the distance, Bellefleur Manor. If he encountered Bellefleur men on the street he always called out a hearty hello, and insisted upon shaking hands, no matter how coldly they eyed him; one day Lawrence, driving the handsome old gold-ornamented phaeton that had been his father's, on his way to see his fiancee, nearly had a serious accident when his team of matched horses reared up in a panic at the noisy approach of the Morris Bullnose-and rather than apologize for the horses' distress, Stanton Pym climbed out of his car and shook hands with Lawrence, amiably, as if it were all a lark; in fact he used the opportunity to tell Lawrence one of his jokes, which was especially inappropriate under the circumstances. (A man and a woman, on their honeymoon. The bridegroom's horse misbehaves. The bridegroom counts three, slowly, before whipping it. Next, the bridegroom's hound misbehaves. Again the bridegroom counts three, slowly, before whipping it. And then there is a disagreement between the bridegroom and his new bride: and slowly he begins to count, One, two . . . ) Stanton exploded in childish laughter, throwing his head back so hard that his straw hat flew off. He was clearly in excellent spirits. He was clearly not in the least afraid of Lawrence. Before taking his leave he invited Lawrence to come visit him and Della after the wedding-for by then, as he said, with a parting smile, "Everything will be settled."

The wedding took place in late September, at the Methodist church, attended by only a few relatives. Della had a trust fund which paid a small but by no means contemptible dividend, and Stanton's new position at the bank was a highly promising one, and they seemed, according to visitors, happy enough: at any rate Elvira soon received word that Della was pregnant. Of course she could not stay away from her daughter, no matter how she disliked her son-in-law; and then, as time passed, she did not really dislike him all that much . . . though of course she disapproved of him . . . disapproved, at any rate, of the idea of him. For the young man himself, even with his foolish little mustache, was well mannered and cheerful and devoted to Della. Or so it seemed. So, indeed, it seemed-as Elvira declared to the others. But what else have we to go on? Shouldn't we perhaps begin to relent, since in the end we'll forgive them anyway?

So it came about that the young couple was invited to the castle, and a number of belated wedding presents were given them. Months before the baby was scheduled to be born Della was allowed to choose among the nursery's several antique cradles; Pym was invited to join the men for cards. (He always lost at cards with the Bellefleurs-but not too badly, so that while Della was vexed she had no reason to be seriously upset.) They were invited to spend several days at the castle during the Christmas holiday, when a number of other relatives and guests were to be there, and it certainly looked-it looked-as if the marriage were being tacitly accepted. (At no point did anyone take Pym aside, of course, and welcome him into the family; or even shake his hand with an expression of pleasure. But then the Bellefleurs were always reticent about their feelings. They would not have wanted to be called sentimental.) It was on Christmas Eve that Pym was killed in a toboggan accident on Sugarloaf Hill. All that day there had been a fair amount of drinking and feasting (and Christmas Day promised a roast suckling pig, and champagne for breakfast), and perhaps Pym was simply unaccustomed to so much celebrating. It was believed that he and Della quarreled sometime during the afternoon, hidden away in their room on the third floor, but it wasn't known what they quarreled about. (Did Della object, suddenly, to her brothers' and cousins' interest in Pym? Was she jealous? For her young husband's head was being turned, flattered by Noel and Lawrence in particular, and he seemed quite cheerfully willing to make a fool of himself on ice skates, on the lake, and roughing about in the snow as if he had been doing this sort of thing with the Bellefleurs all his life.) The Bellefleurs were betting on toboggan races with the Fuhrs and the Renauds, and there was much good-natured horseplay out on the hill, and more drinking. Beer, ale, Scotch, bourbon, straight gin, straight vodka, and various brandies were being consumed. Della was to learn afterward only that her husband had insisted upon taking part in the race-had insisted that he knew how to handle a toboggan-though to her knowledge he had never done anything of the sort before. That the men would attempt Sugarloaf Hill on its steepest side, at night, with the moon nearly obscured by clouds-that they would risk their necks in an absurd bet (the winning toboggan was to collect only $200, to be divided up between five or six men)-that they would plunge downward in the face of a bitter northeast wind, with the temperature already minus five degrees: all this suggested drunkenness, swinish drunkenness.

There were so many versions of what happened on the hill, some overlapping and some flatly contradicting one another, that Della, in her grief and fury, soon gave up attempting to sort out the truth from the lies. She knew only that three toboggans raced-that poor Stanton, in a red stocking-cap and muffler, doubtless quite drunk, had been in the fourth position on the Bellefleur sled-that while in the lead the Bellefleur sled struck an exposed rock and hurtled off to one side, toward a grove of pines-the order was given to jump-and amid much shouting and laughter the men did jump, happy to abandon the expensive toboggan to its fate: but of course Stanton, who knew nothing of tobogganing, was abandoned along with the sled, and killed outright when it smashed against a pine. As quickly as that it happened-as quickly as it takes to recount the incident-one moment the poor befuddled young man was alive, and the next moment he was dead, thrown against a tree trunk like a rag doll, his face so badly mutilated that several of the men, so drunk they could barely stagger to where he lay, quarreled at first about who it was.

"But you know," one of them said finally, with inspired drunken logic, "it must be what's-his-name-you know-the one with the mustache-him-Della's husband-because he's nowhere around here now, and this one here, on the ground here, isn't any one of us-"

They found the red stocking-cap some thirty feet from the body, twisted about a tree limb.

AND SO, GRANDMOTHER Della said, stroking Germaine's cheek with her cool dry hand that smelled of the harshest soap, you have only one grandfather: a Bellefleur grandfather.

The little girl sat motionless, not drawing away from the old woman's hand. For even to move, at such a moment, would be wrong.

. . . They wanted, of course, to kill the baby as well. They wanted me to miscarry. I was four months pregnant with your mother at the time and if they'd had the courage, grandmother Della said, shaking with laughter, sniffing, they would have invited me to ride the toboggan too. . . . But I didn't miscarry, despite the shock of losing Stanton. I was terribly ill for a long time, and I went to live with my sister Matilde, and then the baby was born, your mother Leah, and I wept that it wasn't a boy because I was somewhat out of my head at that time and I imagined that only a boy, a man, could take revenge on his father's murderers.

She closed the old photograph album. For a long moment she said nothing, and though Germaine ached to scramble off the sofa and run away, she remained sitting, her feet in their shining patent-leather shoes brought pertly together, her handknit red kneesocks exactly even. Finally grandmother Della sighed, and wiped at her nose with a rumpled handkerchief, and said in a half-amused tone meant to release her granddaughter: But the one thing I did miscarry, thank God, was God. I never again believed in any of that barnyard manure from that Christmas Eve to this very day. For that I suppose I should thank the Bellefleurs!

Solitaire.

In one of the manor's smallest and dampest rooms, on the second floor of the east wing, looking out upon a section of wall and part of a minaretlike tower with mock-battlemented turrets, the old man sat, backed into a corner, playing cards: slapping cards down on the table before him, one after another after another: studying, without expression, the message that finally lay flattened out before him, exposed and bereft of mystery. And then he snorted with contempt or impatience, and gathered the cards up, and shuffled them again.

Gradually, the children were told, their great-uncle Jean-Pierre would become adjusted to the "outside world," and to them; perhaps, in time, he would allow them into his room (but what a dreary room it was, with a low ceiling and dark-paneled walls and only one window!-and he had chosen it himself), and he would invite them to play cards with him; but at the present time they must respect his privacy and the dignity of his old age, and not spy on him through the keyhole, or jostle about in the corridor giggling like little fools.

Great-uncle Jean-Pierre was an old man, and he wasn't, after all, in perfect health. Sudden noises startled him. He could not bear the cats scurrying in the corridors-the sight of Nightshade, poor Nightshade, quite repulsed him-he hadn't any appetite for even the tastiest of the dishes his mother Elvira ordered for him (he preferred watery oatmeal, and the coarse white bread the servants ate, and he had a curious habit of sprinkling nearly everything-roast beef, potatoes, fresh lettuce and tomatoes-with sugar)-he hadn't (and this struck Leah as strangest of all) any interest in the family's affairs.

But then of course he wasn't well. He coughed, and sniffed, and spat angrily into his handkerchiefs, and complained of chest and stomach pains, and insomnia (for his bed was too soft, and the linen too scratchy-clean), and a sense of vertigo whenever he left his room, or even dared to look out the window. Bellefleur Manor was a horrific place-it was so inhumanly large-he hadn't remembered how large it was: ah, what a terror to contemplate! What sort of mind, driven by an unspeakable lust, had imagined it into being? The castle . . . the castle's grounds . . . the lightless choppy immensity of Lake Noir . . . the thousands upon thousands of acres of wilderness land . . . the mountains in the distance: a terror to contemplate: and beyond them, sprawling out on all sides, a greater horror, that entity glibly referred to as the world. What maddened mind, deranged by an unspeakable lust, had imagined all this into being . . . ?