Mary plans to ride out to the forest with John Eliot, who regularly visits the Indigenous American population living near the colony to convert them to Christianity. She claims her motives are the same for the Hawke family: to help them turn back to God and be saved. John asks Mary whether she lied about the abuse to leave Thomas for Henry.

Thomas chastises Mary for asking to join John Eliot without Thomas’s approval, but Mary, prepared for this critique, tells him she wanted to make sure it was a possibility before bringing it to his attention. She thinks about her plan, which will help her to get the poison from the Hawkes and diminish suspicion that she is evil, though Mary begins to wonder whether she might be.

Both John Eliot and Thomas agree to allow Mary to visit the Hawkes. Mary learns from Jonathan that Peregrine is feeling sick, and the physician compares her illness to Hannah’s recent illness, which Mary suspects was due to poison. Mary wonders whether she is only imagining such possibilities.

Mary travels to the Hawkes, and Esther agrees to trade Mary the poison for some clothes for her children. While there, Esther’s children look through a book Mary brought: The New England Primer, which includes a woodcut of the martyrdom of John Rogers and his family, burning at the stake for their allegiance to the true word of Christ.