Tom sits in the woods and thinks death would be preferable to his heartbreak. He wonders if he should leave town and become a pirate, or perhaps he will become a soldier or a famous warrior in the west. He decides to call his pirate ship “the Spirit of the Storm” (70). He imagines the adoration he’ll receive when he comes back to church as a grown pirate.

As he thinks, he digs into the log he is sitting on and sees a marble. He had put the marble there as part of a spell that would regather every marble he’d ever lost. His faith is broken once he sees the single marble, but he quickly decides that a witch must have interfered with his charm.

He consults a doodle bug, reading its movements as a portent confirms that a witch is to blame. Then he hears a horn, signaling the arrival of Joe Harper. They play outlaws, imagining that they are Robin Hood and Guy of Guisborne. They go through several scenarios in which they each die an equal number of times.