to be learning how to make with their hands as well. Secretly Alvin also hoped that when they saw how tricky and careful it was to make fine machinery like Clevy Sump did, they'd realize that what Alvin Was teaching wasn't much harder if it was harder at all. And it was working well enough.
Except that today, after the noon bread and cheese, he went on out to the mill to find the men gathered around the wreckage of the pumps they'd been making. Every one of them was broke in pieces. And since the fittings were all metal, it must have took some serious work to break it all up. "Who'd do a thing like this?" Alvin asked. "There's a lot of hate goes into something like this." And thinking of hate, it made Alvin wonder if maybe Calvin hadn't come back secretly after all.
"There's no mystery who done it," said Winter Godshadow. "I reckon we ain't got us a pump-making teacher no more."
"Yep," said Taleswapper. "This looks like a specially thorough way of telling us, 'Class dismissed.'"
Some of the men chuckled. But Alvin could see that he wasn't the only one angry at the destruction. After all, these pumps were nearly completed, and all these men had put serious work into making them. They counted on them at their own houses. For many of them, it meant the end of drawing water, and Winter Godshadow in particular had got him a plan to pipe the water right into the kitchen, so his wife wouldn't even have to go outdoors to fetch it. Now their work was undone, and some of them weren't taking kindly to it.
"Let me talk to Clevy Sump about this," said Alvin. "I can't hardly believe it was him, but if it was, whatever's the problem I bet it can be set to rights. I don't want none of you getting angry at him before he's had his say."
"We ain't angry at Clevy," said Nils Torson, a burly Swede. His heavy-lidded gaze made it clear who he was angry at.
"Me?" said Alvin. "You think I done this?" Then, as if he could hear Miss Larner's voice in his ear, he corrected himself. "Did this?"
Murmurs from several of the men assented to the proposition.
"Are you crazy? Why would I go to all this trouble? I'm not an Unmaker, boys, you know that, but if I was, don't you think I could tear up these pumps a lot more thoroughly without taking half so much trouble?"
Taleswapper cleared his throat. "Perhaps you and I ought to talk alone about this, Alvin."
"They're accusing me of wrecking all their hard work and it ain't so!" said Alvin.
"Ain't nobody accusin' nobody of nothin'," said Winter Godshadow. "God follows all. God sees all deeds."
Usually when Winter got into his God-talking moods, the others would sort of back off and pretend to be busy paring their nails or something. But not this time - this time they were nodding and murmuring their agreement.
"Like I said, Alvin, let's you and me have a word. In fact, I think we ought to go on up to the house and talk to your father and mother."
"Talk to me right here," said Alvin. "I'm not some little boy to be taken out behind the woodshed and given a licking in private. If I stand accused of something that everybody knows about except me - "
"We ain't accusing," said Nils. "We're pondering."
"Pondering," echoed a couple of the others.
"Tell me here and now what you're pondering," said Alvin. "Because whatever I'm accused of, if it's true I want to make it right, and if it's false I want to set it straight."
They looked at each other back and forth, until finally Alvin turned to Taleswapper. "You tell me."
"I only repeat tales that I believe to be true," said Taleswapper. "And this one I believe to be a flat-out lie told by a dreamy-hearted girl."
"Girl? What girl?" and then, putting together Goody Sump's behavior and what Clevy Sump had done to the pumps, and remembering the dreamy expression in one girl's eyes when she sat there in the children's class paying no intelligent attention to a thing that Alvin said, he jumped to a certain conclusion and whispered her name. "Amy."
To Alvin's consternation, some of the men took the fact that he came up with her name as proof that Amy was telling the truth about whatever it was she had said. "See?" they murmured. "See?"
"I'm done with this,"