Two men sit on the platform of a train in Kansas. The train is getting repaired and everyone else has left, so they are alone. They see two children running across a field to a farmhouse, and the younger man, named Marlton, tells the middle-aged man, Bettinger, that he believes that God lives in some children for a while. He says that young children live in their own world that is different from the real world, and he says that he remembers the exact minute that God left him. Bettinger asks what Marlton had done to make God leave him, and Marlton replies that he threw a stone. It was June, and Marlton was between five and six years old. There was a yellow house that was at the bottom of a hillside, and the woman who lived there would leave the door open for Marlton. Marlton's mother said that the woman was a Bad Woman, and she warned him not to go into the house or yard, but Marlton felt comfortable there so he did not listen. He thought that maybe she was a witch, but she did not look like the witches he had seen in books. Marlton knew that there was something dark about the Bad Woman's world, but he could not resist going there to see her. The Bad Woman would speak to Marlton like an adult, and they were in harmony with each other. Once, this harmony was disrupted. Marlton was making cookies at her house, and there was a knock at the door. She told Marlton to leave but he did not want to go, she she picked him up and placed him outside. One evening, Marlton had gone to sleep after supper in the hammock by his porch. He was awoken by their neighbor Mrs. Lennox whispering excitedly to his mother. Mrs. Lennox said that Mag Doverly, a tall woman who has a bully, was on a rampage because of her husband and "that creature," and that Mag had gotten her friends together and they were marching up main street. Mrs. Lennox convinces Marlton's mother to go see the procession, so they go off with Marlton sneaking behind them. A crowd is gathered around the Bad Woman's house, and Marlton remembers the poisonous hysteria that poured from the crowd. Marlton wants to make noise like everyone else, so he starts whistling loudly. Mag Doverly and the women start beating at the front door, and they tell the young boys to go around the back in case the woman tries to escape. One of the older boys tells the others to pick up a clump of dirt and rocks to throw at the woman if she tries to leave. They hide in the darkness. The Bad Woman comes out of the back door and does not see them. The boys all throw their rocks, and the woman shrieks. Marlton muses that the clods may not have touched the woman, as the other boys said they were only aiming to scare her back inside. However, Marlton was certain in that moment that one stone had hit her, and it belonged to him. He vaguely remembered the woman being escorted to the railroad station and put on the midnight train. He had simply stood, aware of his empty hand where the rock had been, and he felt at once a sense of terrible loss. As he crawled through a broken fence to get home, he sobbed, and felt utterly empty. Marlton remarks that God had gone out of him with that stone, and he had become a human being.