about what was going on in Europe than the people that lived
there."

At that moment, old Mrs. Kendal fainted dead away and had to be carried
home. Three men carried her and Tom Edwards was one of them. "Kind of
heavy, ain't she?" Tom said. "I never thought Mary weighed much more
than a hundred."

That night the village shook. In his home, Jim staggered against the
wall. Myra fell to the floor. There were two tremors--the second worse
than the first. Then things steadied away, and he helped Myra to her
feet.

"But there wasn't any noise," Myra whispered. The whisper was loud in
the silence.

"That was an earthquake," Jim said. "Nothing to worry about. Might be
one of the bomb's after effects."

The quake did no great damage in the village, but it possibly
contributed to old Mrs. Kendal's death. She passed on an hour later.
"Poor old lady," a neighbor told Myra. "She was plain weary. That was
what she said just before she closed her eyes. 'Hazel' she said, 'I'm
just plumb tuckered.'"

The neighbor wiped her face with her apron and turned toward home.
"Think I'll lie down for a spell. I'm tuckered myself. Can't take things
like I used to."

* * * * *

Now it was a week after the earthquake--two weeks after the falling of
the bombs, and the town went on living. But it was strange, very
strange. Art Cordell voiced the general opinion when he said, "You know,
we waited a long time for the thing to happen--we kind of visualized,
maybe, how it'd be. But I didn't figure it'd be anything like this."

"Maybe there isn't any war," Jim said. "Washington hasn't said so."

"Censorship."

"But isn't that carrying censorship a little too far? The people ought
to be told whether or not they're at war."

But the people didn't seem to care. A deadening lethargy had settled
over them. A lethargy they felt and questioned in their own minds, but
didn't talk about, much. Talking itself seemed to have become an effort.

This continued weariness--this dragging of one foot after another--was
evidently the result of radiation from the bombs. What other place could
it come from? The radiation got blamed for just about everything
untoward that happened. It caused Jenkin's apples to fall before they
were half-ripe. Something about it bent the young wheat to the ground
where it mildewed and rotted.

Some even blamed the radiation for the premature birth of Jane Elman's
baby, even though such things ha