Michael Malone - Weebly

near Bredforet Pond that Polly and Luke had found out.
Might it be consumed in this conflagration? But the
young people had proof now; she would leave that
work to them. As the blaze brightened, she could think
only of Dingley Falls itself. Fire might destroy Dingley
Falls. Three hundred years it had lasted, and now—
under her protectorship—it might fall back to nothing.
She, the last of the governors bearing the name Dingley,
might be the one to lose the town. After all the lives that
had built it; had lived and given birth and died in it; and
all those still young who could wed its past to the future.
Tears squeezed from the old woman's eyes. She
shifted her hands on two metallic canes that helped her
support the useless legs and useless, sickly weight.
Tendons and veins stood out on her hands.
"You!" she said, her head tilted back to the bleeding
sky. "Listen to me!" Wind stirred the short-cropped hair
atop the hawk's face. "Not going to my knees. Never
get up. But standing is hard and I'll do it.
Here's a prayer. Don't say You knew You'd hear
that word breathed by such a Thomas as I. I stand here
to ask You. You save this town.