gone, and I'd be glad to give that iron back to him, fivefold or tenfold, if that's what the law requires of me. Not that I stole it from him, mind you, but because it no longer existed. At the time, of course, I was angry at him because I was ready to be a journeyman years before, but he held me to all the years of the contract anyway, pretending all the time that he didn't know I was already the better smith - "
Among the spectators, Makepeace leapt to his feet and shouted, "A contract is a contract!"
The judge banged the gavel.
"I kept the contract, too," said Alvin. "I worked the full term, even though I was kept as a servant, there wasn't a thing he could teach me after the first year or so. So I figured at the time that I had more than earned the price of the iron that was lost. Now, though, I reckon that was just an angry boy talking. I can see that Makepeace was within his rights, and I'll be glad to give him the price of the iron, or even make him another iron plow in place of the one that's gone."
"But you won't give him the actual plow you made."
"If he gave me gold to make a plow, I'd give him back as much gold as he gave me. But he gave me iron. And even if he had a right to that amount of gold, he doesn't have the right to this gold, because if it fell into his hands, he'd destroy it, and such a thing as this shouldn't be destroyed, specially not by them as has no power to make it again. Besides, all his talk of thief was before he saw the plow move."
"He saw it move?" asked Verily.
"Yes sir. And then he said to me, 'Get on out of here. Take that thing and go away. I never want to see your face around here again.' As near as I can recall them, those were his exact words, and if he says otherwise then God will witness against him at the last day, and he knows it."
Verily nodded. "So we have your view on it," he said. "Now, as to Hank Dowser, what about the matter of digging somewhere other than the place he said?"
"I knew it wasn't a good place," said Alvin, "But I dug where he said, right down till I reached solid stone."
"Without hitting water?" asked Verily.
"That's right. So then I went to where I knew I should have dug in the first place, and I put the well there. And it's drawing pure water even today, I hear tell."
"So Mr. Dowser was simply wrong."
"He wasn't wrong that there was water there," said Alvin. "He just didn't know that there was a shelf of rock and the water flowed under it. Bone dry above. That's why it was a natural meadow - no trees grew there, then or now, except some scrubby ones with shallow roots."
"Thank you very much," said Verily. Then, to Marty Laws: "Your witness."
Marty Laws leaned forward on his table and rested his chin on his hands. "Well, I can't say as how I have much to ask. We've got Makepeace's version of things, and we've got your version. I might as well ask you, is there any chance that you didn't actually turn iron into gold? Any chance that you found the gold in that first hole you dug, and then shaped it into a plow?"
"No chance of that, sir," said Alvin.
"So you didn't hide that old iron plow away in order to enhance your reputation as a Maker?"
"I never looked for no reputation as a Maker, sir," said Alvin. "And as for the iron, it ain't iron anymore."
Makepeace nodded. "That's all the questions I've got."
The judge looked back at Verily, "Anything more from you?"
"Just one question," said Verily. "Alvin, you heard the things Amy Sump said about you and her and the baby she's carrying. Any truth to that?"
Alvin shook his head. "I never left the jail cell. It's true that I left Vigor Church at least partly because of the stories she was putting out about me. They were false stories, but I needed to leave anyway, and I hoped that with me gone, she'd forget about dreaming me into her life and fall in love with some fellow her own age. I never laid a hand on her. I'm under oath and