Fish Out of Water

by Sevenstars

During the 1863-4 winter hiatus, Second Lt. Sherman is invited along as a guest by a fellow-officer going to visit family in Brooklyn, and falls for the children's young governess—whom his friend silently loves too.

Fish Out of Water

by Sevenstars

SUMMARY: During the 1863-4 winter hiatus, Lt. Slim Sherman is invited along as a guest by a fellow-officer going to visit family in Brooklyn, where he finds astonishment, adventure, and even something that feels a little like love. Thanks to Shay, who—though she didn't mean it the way I've used it—gave me the idea for the title and started the plot cooking around in my head. And, as always, to my best beta, Gloria.

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In camp

Stafford Co., Virginia

December 29, 1863

Dear Ma,

It's been a while, I know, so the first thing I want to tell you is that I'm all right—or as all right as a man can be in a war like this one. Your package arrived safely just in time for Christmas, but I've seen no sign of a letter since the first of November, which doesn't surprise me; two-month delays seem to be about normal, even at this season when we've moved into winter camp and are easier to catch up with. I'm hoping that your most recent ones will reach me soon, now that I'm not racing around over half of the Old Dominion. As I sit here writing I can hear a fiddle in the distance, and some men singing "Shenandoah." It's such a sad sound, I can almost understand why back last winter the Army banned "Home, Sweet Home."

I thank you most sincerely for everything you sent—the books and illustrated papers, the crock of sauerkraut, the antelope mincemeat, the wild-plum butter and citron-melon preserves and spiced elderberries, the canned currants, the raisins and oysters (available from the sutlers, but they gouge without mercy, since they have little or no competition), the wild-raspberry jam (my favorite!) and buffalo-berry jelly (everyone I've shared it with remarks on the taste—most have never encountered it before, except for a few Regulars who've done tours in Indian country and have wives who could put it up), the fruitcake and all those cookies, the new shirts and six pairs of socks, and the Burgoyne Surrounded quilt. The officers' mess enjoyed a fine Christmas dinner, thanks in large part to Christmas boxes like my own, and successful foraging by some of the men, who celebrated the season of good will by sharing their bounty with their superiors—several well-grown young shoats, of thirty or forty pounds apiece, which range freely about the woods (though not so plentifully at this season as they did in the fall) and yield a meat more like bear than pork, but not as greasy; chickens, ducks, geese, smoked hams, sweet potatoes, honey. The colored vendors who throng the camps at all times of year provided pies and cakes, bread, butter, milk, fruit, vegetables, and even oysters—gotten where, I can't imagine. As I think I've told you before now, there have been many occasions when we've suffered through days with no rations issued; when shipments of food finally catch up with us, famished men will consume two or three days' worth at a time, then wait anxiously for the next lot. This situation naturally encourages foraging—hunting, harvesting wild fruits, raiding orchards, kitchens, and farm storerooms. It sometimes seems hard to deprive families of their living and sustenance, but when we've been on short rations for several weeks, foraging is the only way we have to supplement our meager diet.

Our Private O'Reilly is an arch-forager; a day rarely passes when he fails to enrich army fare by trading, begging, or stealing (for which last word he substitutes every euphemism he can originate). He forages indiscriminately, taking sheep, hogs, beef cattle, fowls, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, honey, and other edibles, limited only by the abundance of the supply and opportunities for getting at them. Once I met him coming into camp with a hen and a goose hanging from his saddle. Reproached for robbing civilians, he glibly replied, "Oh, bedad, sir, this goose came out as I was paceably wendin' me way along, and hissed at the American flag, and bejasus I shot him on the spot. And I found this hin layin' eggs for th' Ribil army, and I hit her a whack that stopped that act of treason on th' spot too." His resourcefulness, boldness, and persistence are such that he and his mess are able to live sumptuously while others are bedevilled by the gnawings of hunger. Yet he is as brave in combat as he is adept at foraging. At First Bull Run, I'm told, he remained gallantly at his post while scores around him took to their heels, was seriously wounded, and after a period in the hospital returned to the regiment a battle-scarred hero. Moreover, leading scouting and foraging parties, as he frequently does, requires alertness, knowledge, and judgment. His most recent expedition returned to camp with seven horses and a cart loaded with two hams, eleven and a half dozen eggs, honey, flour, potatoes, four pounds of butter, and a lot of onions.

You may hear people talk of "the sunny South," but I'm not finding it so this winter any more than I did the last two. Virginia isn't really so far south, after all—the "camel's hump" no more so than Denver. And because the Potomac and the ocean aren't far away, the air is often chill with a dampness that makes it all the more penetrating. A week before Christmas, the temperature plunged into the mid-twenties, and a swirl of snow fell. Nights routinely bring temperatures in the low twenties, and by dawn it can drop as low as seven, with icicles up to a foot long fringing every roof; as the sun rises they explode into hanging rainbows, a dazzle so intense that you have to squint. So far, though we've had several snowstorms, none has dumped a lot of snow, as we would reckon it in Wyoming, but the winds howl ferociously, drifts piling up at every obstruction while five feet behind them the ground shows through as if it were June. Shutters rattle, doors vibrate, and the stinging cold seeps through the cracks and fissures in every building. At least in this weather we're not being drilled ten hours a day any more; only from 8:30 till noon and two till 3:30, and not even that when it gets really foul. To be honest, I can't really see the point of drill. By this time everyone, including the officers, knows—or should—that the minute a battle is joined, all formality goes out the window and the men fight more or less individually: after two years and a half they've learned that a massed shoulder-to-shoulder formation, especially if the enemy has had the time to dig entrenchments, is nothing but suicide, and while they still go where they're sent—most being members of regiments raised within their own town or county, friends, acquaintances, or related, who know that if they survive they'll have to return and face the home folks—they do it, now, in open ranks, covering each other as best they can. We'd be much better served by marksmanship practice, which is notable mainly for its absence—and more modern weapons; I'm thankful I could shoot (and ride) before I ever got here, and had the money to outfit myself with a good repeating carbine. The only men who actually function according to any kind of system are the artillery.

Sometimes it seems that I've been fighting forever, that you and Pa and Andy and Jonesy and the ranch and our mountain and Dancytown are all some kind of fevered dream. I'm getting so tired, Ma. I can hardly imagine what peace might be like, and I half think we'll still be fighting this war ten years from now. I've seen it seesaw back and forth so many times—you remember yourself how First Bull Run was such a disaster that many influential Northern men pleaded with President Lincoln to make peace at once, on any terms; '62 began auspiciously enough, with the Union threatening the Confederacy from Missouri to Maryland, and that March many of our high-ranking officers believed the war would be over by May; but it wasn't, and by late winter the enemy's military situation wasn't bad. Then came the South's turn for disaster, at Gettysburg, and I guess a lot of people thought that with Vicksburg fallen too, it would have no choice but to surrender; only it didn't, and now most of the politicians are back to sniping at the President, though his popular support seems stronger than ever. As for the South, it's still fighting for its freedom, its homes, and the threatened security of its own society, just as it was at the outset, while we, the Emancipation to the contrary, are really still battling for an imponderable idea of "union;" I haven't attempted any formal kind of inquiry, but from what I've heard just from camp gossip and my fellow officers, I doubt that more than one of our soldiers in ten has any real interest in "freeing the slaves." I wish North and South could have come to some kind of agreement, even peaceable secession—or that the fire-eaters and the abolitionists could have just tussled it out between themselves and not involved the rest of us. It's a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, I guess, or the bad apple spoiling the barrel. I suppose I understand why Southerners were so concerned about being able to take slaves into the new Territories, but they should have taken a better look at the country before they dragged everyone into this fight; anyone who's lived in the West, as we have, knows that the only places slavery could possibly work on any sizeable scale would be in the mines, the way they do it in Mexico. Sometimes I even wish I'd listened to Pa and never enlisted. We just don't seem to be making any headway: it's one step forward and two steps back, and the South may be fighting with its back to the wall, since Gettysburg, but it's too stubborn, or too desperate, to throw in the towel; I begin to think, maybe, that Davis and his people have decided that if they have to go down, they'll do the best they can to ruin us too. On our side, one of the biggest problems is the frequent incompetence of the highest-ranking Volunteer officers: Confederate officers are chosen solely on merit, and most of the lower-echelon Union ones—the lieutenants and captains, who were chiefly chosen from the ranks by neighbors who knew them, and even the majors and lieutenant-colonels, whom they in turn chose from among themselves—have, if not past experience or training, at least native intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and literacy; but colonels and generals are often ambitious men without military experience, commissioned by state governors or appointed by the President to reward loyal Republicans, attract Democratic support, or appease powerful groups, like the Midwestern Germans. Even after all this time, though they've inevitably had to learn some science, they're not really soldiers, not the way the Regulars are. I count myself lucky that my regiment is headed up by a Regular Army Colonel who's spent his whole adult life fighting and knows what he's doing, though I suspect he sometimes thinks it a comedown to be commanding Volunteers. But a great re-enlistment program began with the end of the active campaigning season this year, and whole regiments have been "veteranizing," most of mine among them. I couldn't let my men do something I was afraid to do. So I signed the papers, and I'm now a Veteran Volunteer, "for three years or the war." I'm enclosing a draft for the bounty they paid me, $400 from the War Department; keep it for me, and if I don't come back... at least Pa will be able to buy another 800 acres of grazing land with it.

I think the worst part of the fighting, for me, is when we come out of a battle and I watch my regiment trying to reassemble. So many men never come back, and so often I never know what's become of them. They may be dead and anonymously buried in some mass grave, or by a compassionate civilian who found them on his land, as happened to many at Gettysburg; they may lie hidden in some thicket where they crawled for shelter while wounded, and have been picked clean by the scavengers. They may have been wounded and sent north to one of the base hospitals to recuperate, but those hospitals are under local control, and the men in them are no longer under the orders of their own regiments or armies. So thousands who are sent there for convalescence never return to fight. Many are detailed for light work in the wards, and there they stay because nobody has the authority to send them back to duty; others, recovering their health, simply go home—they're answerable to the hospital authorities, not to the army command, and the hospital rarely cares much where they are; it's probably just as glad to see the back of them and not have to feed them or find bed space for them. Others again may have seized the opportunity to desert in the confusion; it wouldn't be hard to do—find a good covert, wait till nightfall, fix on the Pole Star and start walking. Probably half the men in the Army have been farmers, or at least come from villages and small towns; they've been fishing and catching small game and camping out in the woods since they were boys. If they've been in uniform for any length of time, they've learned to forage, and it's not hard to pick up extra weapons from the dead, a pistol being the most useful, a knife—or maybe a demounted bayonet—next best. A man can find an isolated cabin with some laundry on a line, or even a deserted one whose people left things behind, and get himself some civilian clothes so he doesn't stand out; once he does that, especially here in Virginia, it's not too far to get over the line into Union territory, and from there he can go home, or even West.

I just looked at what I wrote, and I realize it makes me sound as if I've thought of doing just what I've described. I haven't, at least not in any organized way; I signed the muster, which was giving my word, and I won't break it—I'd never be able to face Pa again, if I did. I don't know if I'm a good soldier, although the brass seems to think so, or at least to want me in their commands, since I've served under three different generals and in as many regiments since I signed up. I don't have enough rank to make much difference, even to my own men, in the way things are done, so I just try to carry out my orders to the best of my ability. I find that I can understand the self-consciousness of the Germans, though I don't share their blood: the fear of showing fear often makes me brave.

Infantry, the hard core of both armies, usually bears the brunt of any fight, with cavalry and artillery normally in near support, and because tactics haven't kept up with the advances in weapons technology, casualties can be unbelievably high. At a guess I'd say the average overall runs close to half, counting both dead and wounded, but I've heard of many outfits that have suffered nearly 90% in a single battle, though some are lucky; I know of one infantry regiment that has lost only two or three per cent to date. The cavalry, since it doesn't usually charge in mass formation, and when it does charge is a lot of fast-moving targets difficult to draw a bead on, overall does better in stand-up slugging matches, but we're all over the map on raids and scouts and such, which exposes us more regularly to enemy action, and my regiment has run a little under 42% losses since it was first established. Ours is a war of movement, with frequent scouting and foraging expeditions, skirmishes, and raids. Cavalry is the eyes and ears of an army. While the bored infantry remains in camp for long periods, the mounted troops are out raising havoc with enemy communications or chasing Rebels intent on serving ours the same way. When the infantry does march, the cavalry rides ahead and is first to meet the enemy. If an enemy army is known to be approaching, much of the responsibility for scouting and observing the roads falls to the horse soldiers; when battle is met, we typically join the artillery in occupying the highest available ground, serving as support to it, and frequently are held as a reserve, with detachments sent quickly to points that appear to be weakening, sometimes dismounting to form a skirmish line or to fight from cover while the rest of the force begins to fall back; in a retreat we're often used as rear guard on account of our mobility and flexibility. Even after an area is "pacified," it's the cavalry that is charged with driving out predatory bands of robbers and guerrillas. All this is wearing enough; but what makes me truly sad is to see the toll this war takes in horses and mules. Poor innocent creatures, they know nothing of what causes the chaos around them, yet they give everything they have so loyally—more so than some of the men—and often their lives, sometimes in terrible pain. Any man who's had to depend on his horse the way we do in the West can't help but feel a wound open in his own heart when he sees a struggling caisson horse still caught in its traces, or a limping cavalry mount wandering about the field searching for its master—or perhaps standing like a dog over one who will never rise again. A soldier at least chooses to enlist, or to become a paid substitute, or simply not to desert. A horse or mule can't do that; it just goes where it's ridden or driven.

I wonder, too, if even a Union victory will ever really bring the country back together. A lot of people up North have been demonizing the South from the beginning, and if they have victory to empower them, many will want revenge for the blood and treasure we've been pouring out all this time—especially for the lives and limbs of their loved ones; I honestly fear what they'll try to do to their defeated enemy. As for the South, if it loses, it will lose everything—not only the freedom it's trying to win, but its economy, its whole way of life; how can its people be expected to forgive that? I've tried all along to make war like a civilized man, perhaps because I've seen what the other kind of fighting does to the people caught up in it, but there's only one of me, and what difference can I really make? Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is thinking of our West, still unspoiled by cannons and fire—a place where people will be able to go to make new lives for themselves.

And yet, sometimes I can see that our two sides are still more similar than different. As early as the spring of '62, as the two sides in the East prepared for the battle at Seven Pines, soldiers in advance outpost positions frequently visited one another, exchanging gossip, newspapers, and food. Across the Potomac that summer the pickets taunted each other, swapped coffee for tobacco, and on warm days swam together in the middle of the stream when the officers weren't looking. Young Henry Douglas, CSA, rode to Shepheardstown with a courier and watered his horse in the Potomac while he looked over at his home, the house still standing though the barn had been burned, Federal soldiers lounging in the yard, and light artillery behind the stone wall. He saw his father come out and walk toward the barn. The Yanks invited him over. He offered to meet them at midstream in a boat, and when they found out who he was they insisted that he should pay his family a visit. Their officers, they said, were in town, and they would guarantee his safety. "I don't give a d-n for a Union," roared one, "which could be broken up by a man seeing his mother!" Douglas couldn't resist letting them lift him into their boat. They sent up the hill for her, and mother and son had a few moments together on the riverbank while she kissed him and wept, fearing it might be a trap. But it wasn't, and he returned in safety to General Jackson. This fraternization, contrasted as it is with the virtually mad slaughter that almost always follows once the fighting begins again, is one of the strangest things about the war.

On the Rapidan and the Shenandoah they swap coffee for tobacco pound for pound, floating them across the river on tiny rafts; they talk across the barriers about home and the girls they left behind them. One day across the Rapidan a group of Yankees, watching a Reb being baptized, joined in the hymn singing; across the Rappahannock winter camps of the two sides sing competitively, with the Southern boys offering a Confederate song and the Yanks replying by putting their own words to the same tune. On the Virginia front this year I saw a Yank and a Reb competing for a sheep that ventured between the lines. They finally agreed to compromise by dividing the prize, and each took half the carcass back to his own camp. At Vicksburg, as the hot summer dragged on, the Confederates, pinning their faith on a rescue by General Johnston, refused to surrender. The lines, which had been some hundreds of yards apart, inched closer together until, at night, the pickets could converse. They met at night between the lines, when their officers couldn't see them, sang "When This Cruel War is Over," and exchanged coffee, tobacco, and newspapers. Johnny Reb grumbled over the "twenty‑Negro law," a provision of the Confederate conscription law which allows the owner of twenty slaves to stay at home while a poor man has to go. Billy Yank thought the North's draft was just as unfair: a poor man had to fight, but a rich man could hire a substitute. By day the Union boys took to placing a cap on a ramrod and poking it above the head‑logs of a trench, taking bets first on how many bullets Johnny would shoot through it within a given time. When the lines ran close enough to shout greetings and insults between them, both sides liked that better than shooting. "Hello, Reb!" "Howdy, Yank!" Both sides were starving, the one for tobacco and the other for hardtack and bacon. These necessities were tossed across the no‑man's‑land between the lines, sometimes wrapped in the Vicksburg news‑sheet printed on the white side of a homely green wallpaper. Dewberries began to ripen in the gullies between the trenches, and impromptu truces were arranged so that men on both sides could come out and pick them: fresh fruit was the best cure for diarrhea.

Once, after several days of desultory pot‑shooting, a private from a Wisconsin regiment suddenly threw down his rifle and announced, "I'm goin' out to shake hands with them Rebs." Calling out as he left the trench, he stepped forward; the firing stopped, and a Reb came out to meet him. As the two shook hands, their respective squads followed. In a few minutes hundreds of men were milling about between the trenches, swapping tobacco for coffee, complaining about the weather and the errors of their generals, trading stories and pocketknives and comparing tintypes of wives and sweethearts. The lull was brief: a Union officer presently remembered his rank and responsibilities, climbed out of his trench, and cursed the truant soldiers impartially, ordering them back to their rifle pits. They went, all waiting politely until the last was under cover. But it was only the first time. As the siege continued, there was constant fraternization between Yankee front‑line troops and Rebel defenders. On more than one occasion it was discovered that men on one side had relatives on the other, and arrangements were made for them to get together. Once a Rebel soldier gave some money to his Yankee brother "to send to the folks back in Missouri." The siege lasted so long that some of the men on opposite sides became friends. Against orders, boys in blue and gray alike crawled out of their trenches to get together; they even played cards, two‑and‑two, with coffee and tobacco for stakes. Everybody—including Grant, it's said—hated this grim, tedious, dirty business and wished, if there had to be wars, that somebody would invent a better way of winning them than by making empty bellies do what bullets couldn't. The Rebs sometimes said they were "sick and tired of the war" and that if the Yanks would stack their arms and go home they would do the same "and hang their ringleaders into the bargain." After the fiasco of the Battle of Fredericksburg last year, such an agreement appealed greatly to us war‑weary soldiers of the Army of the Potomac as well. Near Murfreesboro, just before the Battle of Stones River, the bands of the opposing forces began, shortly after dark, to take turns playing patriotic airs. Presently one of them struck up "Home, Sweet Home;" the other joined in immediately; and then hundreds of voices on both sides united till the surrounding country reverberated with the strains of Payne's beloved hymn.

In many places the front lines are so close together that the pickets and other enlisted men of both sides can chaff each other without lifting their voices. Often they become intimate, meeting at night to exchange pictures of sweethearts and engage in petty barter, trading information, tobacco for coffee, bullets; picking berries together in the warm fields until the bugle tells them to kill each other, wading creeks to trade Southern newspapers for Northern canteens, sugar, sardines, and soap or to swap knives, spoons, pipes, money—and Beadle's dime novels, which only Yanks can acquire legitimately but which the Southerners love just as well, making them one of the most popular articles of trade; even inviting each other to parties. Sometimes at night, men from the two armies will come out of their trenches, shake hands, and sit talking together—of their homes, their troubles, their leaders, the battles they have been in. Yanks and Rebs enjoy joint swimming parties and even take turns playing hosts at meals. Across picket lines, Johnny Reb calls: "Hey, Yank, got any coffee?" Softly comes the answer: "Yup. Got any tobacco?" A pause, then: "Yank, you won't shoot if I come over to swap?" Again a pause, then: "It's all clear now, Reb. Bring that tobacco!" A favorite song or well‑known hymn sounding from one of two enemy camps can set both to singing in unison. Men of opposing camps take turns rendering favorite musical selections. Sometimes the younger Union soldiers even save food from their own suppers to offer their Southern enemies, make them gifts of coffee and even quinine. Truces are called to allow burial parties to roam the battlefields; under the white flag soldiers meet their enemies and discuss the war. Many an unofficial truce is made, too, for the gathering of firewood in thickets exposed to sharpshooter fire or for the rescue of a wounded comrade. And many a generous warning comes at the end of such arrangements—"Watch yourself, Johnny, we're opening up!" or "Low bridge, Yank, here it comes!" Even officers don't always shun such contacts: I heard of one Union officer who discovered, quite recently, that a West Point roommate was on the other side of the Rapidan, and was smuggled across the lines in a Southern uniform and taken to a dance. It isn't a hating war—not any more. Fighting will be bitter again in the spring, but for now we are again one people, speaking the same language, reading the same Bible, raised with the same historical heroes, holding the same bedrock beliefs. We have behind us the same background, many of us, of a far island home, and then of small sailing ships at sea, and then of a new land, huge forests, Indians, wolves, bears, and at last towns and farms, roads, stages, packet‑boats and railway trains. On Washington's Birthday and the Fourth of July—holidays celebrated by both sides—men in the two opposing armies, on the very same day, less than a mile apart, can hear the same documents being read aloud, documents held to be fundamental to American nationality; they can celebrate the same accomplishments in much the same way—with feasting, drinking, military display, patriotic oratory. The gulf between soldier and stay‑at‑home seems greater than that which separates enemies. To a soldier, another soldier is a patriot and a victim, like himself, no matter which uniform he wears. One says "I guess" or "I calc'late," the other says "I reckon," and they differ somewhat in temperament, but the innermost meaning isn't far from being the same. A sense of kinship has developed between the men of the two armies: the man one faces suffers the same hardships as oneself. I know that as an officer I should disapprove such things, but I can't bring myself to do it. The Confederates fight just as gallantly for the cause they sincerely believe in as we Northerners do. Each side feels it is following the guidance of the founding fathers. The Southerners consider that they are fighting for their independence, just as their forefathers fought for independence from England. The Northerners fight to prevent the breakup of the new nation those same forefathers brought forth, with high ideals of liberty and justice, fighting, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

In battle, intentional actions strike one less than randomness. One man is shot; the other, standing next to him, is spared. Almost all soldiers get sick; the same disease will kill one man while another recovers. Death comes to whom it will; sometimes it seems accidental. Ecclesiastes, as you remember, recognized that it isn't virtue or vice that determine a man's lot, but blind and merciless chance: "I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

I sound like I'm about ready to give up, I know. I won't do that; I hope you know me better than to think I would. But I miss you all so much... I long to see you all again, to shake Pa's hand and hold you and Andy in my arms and taste Jonesy's good coffee, to smell the clean dry air of Wyoming, the sage off the flats and the pines on the high slopes, to drink the iron-tangy water from our pump, to look at the mountains with a storm building up over their peaks or a fresh snow on them... even to eat dust on a cattle drive; at least it would make me feel as if I was accomplishing something.

I'd better stop before I start bawling; you don't want a letter you can't read for tear-spots all over the paper. I'll try to write again soon and tell you something of our camp and the way we live. Thank you, Ma, for being there to pour this out to, even if I can't do it to your face.

Love to all,

Slim

Slim Sherman carefully wiped the point of his silver pen, screwed down the cap of the matching inkwell, and tucked both into the leather-covered writing-case that would fit neatly into one of the capacious canvas saddlebags his mother had made for him when it became clear that he was going to go East and enlist no matter what his father had to say about it. He blotted the letter, folded it around the bank draft, tucked both into the envelope and sealed the flap, then laid it between his gauntlets and hat on the corner of the field-desk, where he'd remember it when it was time to go to supper; there was always a mail bag hung on the wall just inside the officers' mess hut. He sighed and stretched, working his shoulders to loosen the muscles, and checked his battered brass watch—ten past five; he had almost an hour to wait. He looked around the little log hut that would be his home, now, till the spring campaigning season started up; spartan enough, but not really so bad for a man who'd lived on the range and slept out in all kinds of weather—he sometimes thought that nobody ought to be allowed in the Army who hadn't spent his boyhood outside of cities. It was built pen-fashion, like a frontier cabin, with a slanting board roof—the enlisted men often used their A-tents, buttoning them together and making them more impervious to water by stretching rubber blankets over all, but an officer's wall tent wasn't practical for that purpose. A stick-and-clay fireplace centered the rear wall, with a chimney of the same construction topped by a couple of barrels to increase the draft, and a flat stone to serve as a base for the fire. To either side was a camp cot, folding table and chair, with a couple of packing-box seats for company and a rough washstand by the door, made by turning a hardtack case bottom-up and mounting it on legs. Shelves and pegs patterned the log walls for outerwear, saddlebags, hats, sabers, treasured family daguerrotypes, a shaving mirror, a flute in a case, and anything else Slim and his cabin-mate might want to put there. They had brightened the place up for the season, in the fashion of the countryside, with long garlands of smilax looped wherever they could fasten them, holly and pine boughs tacked to the chimney, a spray of holly on the door.

Christmas, he thought. My third away from home. He could hardly believe he'd be twenty-one in another week—not that he hadn't been doing a man's work for years, but that he'd been fighting his fellow Americans for more than two of them. Lord, Andy would have turned six earlier this month—how much must he have changed? Slim supposed Pa planned to get the boy a pony of his own in another couple of years, when he'd be the same age his big brother had been when he'd gotten his first horse. He'd be about old enough to start learning to use a rifle, too. Slim wondered if he'd be home in time to help teach him. Wondered if he'd live that long, and sighed again.

Not for almost a decade would Slim realize that the war was, for him, much the same kind of world-widening experience that his best friend, Jess Harper, had found the bustling mining capital of Denver to be in 1861. In his boyhood in western Illinois he'd known Swedish and Norwegian farmers, the ubiquitous Germans and Irish, free blacks, and Americans from both the northern and southern parts of the country; after he turned thirteen and began going up the trail with Pa, he'd worked with some Mexicans, and he'd known more than a few Indians too. (What, he wondered, would Thunder Coming and Blue Eagle, Runs Horses and Stands Shining, make of this fratricidal war? The Cheyennes were fighting men, but they had an absolute horror of killing members of their own tribe. The Cheyenne who kills another Cheyenne rots away inside, they said, and he damaged the tribe's medicine too. After all this time fighting his tribesmen, Slim was ready to believe that the same might be true of them.) But the generality of the people he'd dealt with on a regular basis had been much like himself: white, Protestant (except for most of the Irish), of Northern and Western European extraction, country-raised and country- (or at best small-town-) dwelling, craftsmen and farmers, townsfolk and stock-raisers, often owners of their own land or businesses, and therefore their own independent masters, as he had been raised to think all Americans should want to be. The Union Army was much more heterogenous, especially in the Eastern Theater, to which most of the men who'd signed up in the biggest cities—New York, Boston, Philadelphia—had been assigned. Here he'd met city men, rich men, poor men, clerks and factory hands, Catholics, Jews, men from Southern and Eastern Europe (the 39th New York Infantry was made up entirely of such). His cabin-mate was Miklós Almássy, born in Hungary and brought over at the age of eight when his father, a man of learning and liberal bent, was forced to flee the country after the failure of the revolution in 1848-9; technically, being their company's First Lieutenant, he ranked Slim, but they found it not difficult to ignore.

In some ways, Slim found his rank uncomfortable, and often thought he'd have been happier to have stayed a sergeant. As a second lieutenant, he was the lowest on the seniority totem pole, a problem exacerbated by the fact that he was a Volunteer with a battlefield promotion. But because he was an officer, however insignificant, he couldn't fraternize with the NCO's and enlisted men, with whom he felt a truer kinship; after all, he'd been born on a farm, had driven cattle and fought Indians and chased down a rustler or two, caught and broken wild horses, and generally lived by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his hands all his life; he'd guested in Cheyenne lodges, carried a handgun since he was not quite thirteen and a half (at least when he was on the trail), and gone West with his family by wagon train, taking his turn at stocktending and nightguard, helping get the clumsy prairie schooners over treacherous rivers and across gullies and ravines. He was well-read and well-spoken—Ma had made sure of that—but he didn't feel comfortable around most of the other "shoulder-straps," not even the ones who'd been chosen by election.

Well, I guess I should get some reading in, rather than just sit here feelin' sorry for myself, he thought, and got up to glance over the neat rows of books on the shelves above his cot: several volumes of poetry—Scott, Byron, Tennyson, Moore, Southey, and Browning, who was only just beginning to be passionately admired in the United States, though his meters were disconcerting and his rhymes had a startling eccentricity that demanded close attention, and he was besides an intellectual, writing about people and incidents whose recognition required knowledge of history, particularly art history; The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo; a baker's dozen of his favorite Shakespearean plays, almost evenly divided between tragedies and comedies, with a few of the histories for variety—Macbeth, The Tempest, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Henry IV (both parts), Henry V—in inexpensive paperback; two or three Latin authors in translation; a few selections from the currently popular humorists Josh Billings and Artemus Ward, who were favored throughout the army as "gloom-lifters," it being well known that even President Lincoln took great comfort from them; and the ones Ma had sent, Bryant's Selections from American Poets, Halleck's Selections from British Poets, Tales from Shakespeare, The Lady of the Lake, Creasy's Decisive Battles; Theodore Winthrop's Life in the Open Air and The Canoe and the Saddle and Ik Marvel's My Farm at Edgewood, Landor's Heroic Idylls (particularly well suited, he thought, to a fighting man's collection), and Speke's Journal of Discovery of the Source of the Nile, all new this year. One thing to be said about being an officer, he had to admit, was that you could have more baggage, since you weren't expected to carry it all yourself: anything you couldn't get on your horse would be loaded into the officers' carts that accompanied the supply wagons, portable forges, ambulances, and sutlers' and correspondents' vehicles. He reached for Cooke's Cavalry Tactics—the official manual ever since its publication last year—and then hesitated, trying to choose between Bulwer-Lytton's philanthropic highwayman Paul Clifford (he'd always enjoyed Robin Hood, after all), Vanity Fair, or a chapter of Hugo's thrilling and substantial Les Misérables, whose publication last year had gained its author American popularity for the first time and carried its predecessor, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, along with it.

"Slim? Anybody home?"

"Quentin? Yes, come in," he invited, and the plank door swung open to admit First Lieutenant Quentin Colville, Second New York Cavalry. He was two or three years older than Slim and about six inches shorter, with wheat-colored hair, softer and finer than Slim's, and surprising chocolate-brown eyes in an angular, almost delicate face. His best feature was his smile, which was underlain with just a hint of sadness; it touched a chord in Slim, who was both wearying of war and often regretful over the way he and his father had parted.

"Glad I caught you before you went to mess," said Quentin. "I've a notion we'll have rain before Taps, and I've no particular urge to go rambling around in the wet, even if it's my horse who'll be dealing with the mud. Did you get your leave papers yet?"

"Of course," Slim replied, "but you know they're no use to me. I can't get out to Wyoming Territory and back in thirty days, not and have any reasonable length of time to spend with my family, and least of all in winter; travel on the prairie's just too risky, even by stagecoach. I might end up stranded and AWOL, or worse."

"But you deserve the time off," Quentin pointed out, "just as much as anyone. So—how'd you like a leave, all the same? Mine came through this morning—the one I was due for that wound I got back in October; they must have lost the paperwork for a while, I was thinking it wasn't going to be granted, since all I got was barked on the shoulder—and I thought I'd invite you to come along and visit my family. In Brooklyn. It won't be as good as seeing your own, I know, but at least it'll be a break from Army routine." The Second hadn't been affected by the great wave of "veteranizing;" it had been mustered in between August and October of '61, and wouldn't be due for re-enlistment till late summer.

For a minute or two Slim was stunned. He and Quentin had been thrown together not long after he'd come East with Colonel Barton in October of '62, Barton to assume command of the regiment and Slim as a replacement officer for the 3rd Indiana Cavalry, also known as "Hooker's Horse Marines;" they'd met at the brigade library, discovered a common bond in both books and music (and a general disinterest in vice—neither one used tobacco, and they drank only lightly and occasionally if at all), and deepened their friendship the following spring through the sometimes humorous process of Slim's learning to play baseball, a game in which Quentin was expert. At least once a week, when obligations permitted, Quentin would ride over for a visit, and they'd spend an hour or two hashing over camp gossip or recent news or exchanging opinions about their officers. They got along well, and Slim considered Quentin a friend, but to be asked along on a family visit—it was far more than he'd ever expected.

"Cat got your tongue?" Quentin teased. "I know it's probably a shock, but you're the only man from the far side of the Missouri that I know well enough to ask. And I want to get started tomorrow, if we can; that way we should be able to make it by New Year's Day, and give them a nice surprise."

"But..." Slim protested, "it's not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but—why do it at all? Why saddle your family with a complete stranger?"

"They'll be glad to have you, take my word. Especially my uncle; he's fascinated by the West. He's already written me that he wishes he could meet you. Come on, Slim, say you'll go. I'd really like the company, and I think you'll like them."

Slim hesitated again, looking at the envelope half-hidden under his hat, thinking of the feelings of loneliness and near despair that had been his almost constant companions these last couple of weeks. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't say it if I wasn't," Quentin insisted.

"You have to let me pay my own fare, at least," Slim told him.

"Is that a yes?"

One more moment's silence, and then Slim smiled and stuck out his hand. "I guess it is," he agreed, and they shook on it.

**SR**

Next morning found Slim packing his saddlebags—shaving kit, writing case, "housewife" sewing kit, comb, several books, shirts and socks and underwear—and rolling his spare and dress uniforms in his rubber blanket against the possibility of further showers, although the sky had cleared overnight and the morning, while sharply chill, was bright and sunny. "I won't bother with my blankets or mess kit, or my saber and carbine," he said, "and I don't think I'll draw any oats either, so I'll leave the feed bag. We should be able to find a farmhouse where we can get some feed, either buy it or forage for it, and it's not as if we'll be in battle."

"So we hope, my friend," replied Miklós Almássy from his seat on the other cot, in his odd faintly-Germanic accent. "The enemy may be anywhere. We don't call Mosby the Gray Ghost for nothing."

Miklós was perhaps the only man Slim knew who not only liked the regulation hat, with its high drum-shaped crown, turned-up right brim, brass eagle clip, and black ostrich feather, but actually wore it with a certain style, possibly because it was, after all, a Kossuth hat, modelled after the kind popularized by the Hungarian patriot and revolutionary fifteen years before. In fact, he wore anything with panache and dash, which was only accentuated by a rather ferocious black beard. And despite the beard, he was—at least when off duty—a gentle, soft-spoken, scholarly man who spoke both French and German, read Latin and Greek, and in between battles enjoyed books and his flute; he was musical by instinct, a quality inherited from his mother, a Bohemian. He and Slim shared an interest in fiction, especially the historical kind, and in horses; it was Miklós who had introduced Slim to the popular historical novels of Miss Mühlbach.

"All the same," said Slim, "we want to make time. It's forty miles to Washington even if we don't have to detour. We need to get in early enough to find a room so we can get cleaned up—the train will take most of tomorrow, if we can even get seats. So every pound we can leave off is an advantage. We won't have a lot of wagons or infantry to hold us back, but we can't waste a minute."

He tightened the blanket roll's strap, then donned his caped military overcoat and the high-crowned black Western-style hat, trimmed with his corps badge and the crossed-sabers Cavalry insignia, that he preferred to the issue version. As he was pulling on his gauntlets a tap came at the door, and Simon, the twelve-year-old "contraband" orderly and groom he and Miklós shared, put his head in. "Got Cheyenne all saddled up for you, Mist' Slim," he said. "An' I could just see Mist' Quentin comin' up the street. Can't miss that mare of his, with her singlefoot an' her white markin's."

"Thanks, Si," Slim told him. "Now you take good care of Mister Miklós while I'm gone, will you? You'll only have one man and horse in your charge for the next month, so I expect to see both of them in first-rate condition when I get back, understand?"

"Yessuh, I understands." The boy gave him a sad look. "Gonna miss you somethin' dreadful, Mist' Slim. You sure you fixin' to come back?"

"Unless the train pitches off the track, I don't see any reason I shouldn't," Slim replied. "There's no war in New York even if it is pretty strongly pro-Confederate." He slung his saddlebags over his shoulder, tucked the blanket roll under his arm, paused long enough to shake hands with the Hungarian, and ducked out of the hut into the bright winter sunlight. The knowingest of the Negroes who served the camp in assorted capacities all agreed that this would be an unusually cold season, and it looked as if they might be right: apart from what Slim had written to his mother yesterday, the thermometer outside the mess hut had read only twenty-nine when he and Miklós went to breakfast.

The winter camp, like the more temporary ones of the campaigning season, had been organized by regiment, then grouped within that by company, with streets running between the rows of huts, oriented north and south so nobody would have the cold wind blowing directly in at his door. At the front, perpendicular to the streets, was the color line; next, the huts of the enlisted men; behind them, the quarters of the noncoms; then those of the company officers, and finally the regimental CO and his staff. Back of these in turn were the baggage trains. As Simon had noted, Quentin was just riding up the officers' street to pick up his friend. He pulled up a few feet away as Slim was fastening the blanket roll across the pommel. Enlisted men might have their mounts issued to them, but officers had to purchase theirs, and not a few would-be Volunteer cavalrymen, like Slim, had brought their own from home—though he hadn't been an officer at the time. Quentin's was a white-faced mahogany bay mare with white hind legs and a natural singlefoot; Slim's—named Cheyenne because he'd been a gift from Thunder Coming—was a coppery sorrel gelding with a flaxen mane and tail. Both were rigged out with the new McClellan saddle that had been first introduced to the Army in '58. The old Grimsley type had had cloth-covered, hair-filled panels and a filled stitched seat, which absorbed water and dirt and were difficult, if not impossible, to repair and clean in the field. The McClellan was leather-covered with no padding, except sometimes a sheepskin lining to help hold the saddle blanket in place, and with its exposed rigging harness and quarter straps, it could be repaired in the field without tearing the whole saddle down. The short seat and high pommel and cantle held the rider steady for hand-to-hand combat, not an infrequent occurrence in this war, and the open seat helped to prevent saddle sores on long campaigns. Still, Slim didn't like it; since he was thirteen he'd been riding Western saddles with their roomy, comfortably padded seats and sloped cantles, and he was privately very thankful for the leather hoods on the stirrups—he couldn't get used to flat-heeled boots and was always just a little worried about having his foot slip through and hang him up.

Half an hour later the two young officers passed the sentries at the edge of the camp and turned north at a brisk six-mile-an-hour jog, the horses' hooves splashing in the mud and rain puddles left from last night's showers. There would still be the mounted pickets a few miles out, but they'd be no trouble; their concentration was keeping people (specifically the enemy) out, not in.

From the crest of a hill, two gray-clad figures, lying belly-down in the dead grass, watched the blue-uniformed riders heading north. "We could take 'em easy," said one, in a flat coastal-Texas drawl. He was a lanky fellow of average size, with straight brown hair under his forage cap, and a disconcerting slyness in his green-hazel eyes.

"Yeah," his counterpart allowed, pushing back a flag of heavy matte-black forelock that badly needed barbering, "but what'd we do with 'em after? They're officers, Johnny. They'll just get exchanged. 'Sides which, 'less we can get around in front and cut 'em off, odds are we couldn't catch 'em. Their horses likely got grain this mornin'. Ours didn't." He glanced down the backslope of the hill to the two horses—his buckskin and Johnny's black—standing ground-tied behind it. Like all Confederate cavalry, they had furnished their own mounts—Texas ponies with a good leaven of mustang blood; they could last, and keep their condition, on an all-grass diet, and they'd die before they tired, but they weren't fast animals on the short distance, under five miles or so.

"We'd get a couple good horses out of it," Johnny observed. "And we could take two bluebellies outta play for good."

The dark-haired one gave him a narrow-eyed glare. "That better not mean what it sounds like, Duncan," he growled softly, in a gravelly whiskey-and-velvet Panhandle accent. "Killin' in battle's one thing, shootin' a man down in cold blood's another. I don't do that, and I ain't lettin' you do it neither."

Johnny met his cold blue gaze for a moment, then grunted. "Don't matter to me. I 's just sayin'."

"Well, don't say it around me," snapped the other. "Come on. We was ordered to scout as far down as Tappahannock and we ain't halfway there yet. If we're meanin' to get back to camp before dark, we best get movin'."

"Just 'cause you was taught by Dixie Howard don't give you no call to act like a sergeant, Jess," Johnny grumbled, but he moved, just the same.

**SR**

Washington, D.C., was, as it had been for more than two and a half years, a vast troop depot surrounded by camps and fortifications, wracked by inflation, shortages, and alternately cheering and frightening battle news, and seething with a bewildering mixture of office seekers, government workers and officials, runaway slaves and free Negroes, lobbyists, politicians, prostitutes, good Samaritans, deserters, average citizens, war contractors, profiteers and camp followers of every stripe, and the anxious relatives of wounded or missing men, besides friends and relations come to visit those in the surrounding camps, and almost certainly several score of spies, if not more. When the war first began, the city had become patriotically austere, but as the conflict dragged on, people had turned to gay balls and parties for relief from tedium and tension. There were Enlistment Fund balls, Patent Office balls, and Victory balls featuring the "Kiss Quadrille," in which each man, at "swing your corner," kissed his partner. The theater was in a flourishing state, with Ford's being a great favorite of the President and his Cabinet, and both band concerts and private musicales took place regularly, along with card parties, masquerade balls, oyster suppers, amateur theatricals ranging from charades and tableaux vivants to full-scale plays, and every variety of social. Getting a hotel room, even for just one night, was an exercise in patience: Slim and Quentin reached the city limits a little after three, but it took them till nearly six to find a place to stay. This done, Quentin went off to make arrangements about their horses—neither one wanted to pay two bits a day for the next month to have them stay at a stable, so they'd agreed that if they could manage it, they'd put the animals with one of the regiments on security duty—while Slim found a bathhouse and got cleaned up; then they met at a prearranged spot and Quentin went to get his own bath while Slim purchased their train tickets. This was a busy season for travelling, and made more so by the thousands of men who'd "veteranized" and were due a furlough home, but he managed to get two seats on the earliest departure, though it would mean getting up at four and eating breakfast (if they had time) at the station restaurant.

Northern railroads weren't in such a bad case as the Southern kind; they were in a good deal less danger of having their tracks ripped up by enemy raiding parties, and they could still get parts when they needed them, though it might take longer than it had in peacetime. But all the trains were overcrowded, and so were the tracks; the rails and roadbeds were badly stressed from too much heavy traffic (particularly the long strings of freight cars carrying supplies to the camps), which, together with the crowding, made for a greater chance of stoppages, delays, and accidents; and many of the crews, both on board and in the shops, had enlisted in the Army, which left all the lines shorthanded. The trip should have taken a bit over eleven and a half hours; it took fifteen, by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Trenton to Jersey City. Fortunately washrooms and common drinking tumblers had been installed on all trains by the time the war broke out, "news butchers" plied the aisles of every train with sandwiches, fruit, candy, reading matter, and assorted trinkets, and buffets—rather like the free lunches in saloons—had been put in at one end of each smoker; dining cars were being talked of, but none existed, and meal stops sometimes allowed as little as ten minutes, particularly when a train was running late.

In Jersey City it was a little easier to find a room, though they still had to share it. Their window looked out on Upper New York Bay, with the Battery just barely visible to the left and the lights of Brooklyn Heights sparkling dead ahead some three miles across the water. "That's home," said Quentin. "We'll have to take the Pavonia Ferry to Manhattan in the morning—it lands at Chambers Street—and then catch the Fulton Street to Brooklyn." He grinned at his friend. "I hope you don't get seasick, Slim."

"I've never been to sea, so I don't know," admitted Slim, who'd been wondering about precisely that. "I've been on my share of riverboats and even coastwise steamers, but I guess they don't have to deal with the kind of rough water there must be on a big open stretch like this one, and with an outlet to the ocean only—how far—?"

"Around ten miles, if you count the ocean as beginning at the tip of Coney Island, which you probably should, since it's called Sea Gate," Quentin replied. "Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?"

"Don't be so cheerful about it," Slim grumbled. Yet he was intrigued too. He'd never seen the ocean, though of course he'd read about it; and growing up in Illinois and later in Wyoming, it had never really occurred to him to think that he would ever see New York either. "I can't make out very much in the dark," he added. "What's Brooklyn like, Quentin?"

"Get comfortable," Quentin suggested, "and I'll tell you about it."

Long ago, so geologists said, a great sheet of ice, a glacier, creeping down from the Pole, had slid over Long Island, ground to a halt, sat there for a time, and slowly retreated whence it had come, leaving behind it, on the sandy flatland at the western end of the island, the rubble it had dragged from the mainland in its passage. Over time these rocky heaps and ridges became grown over with underbrush and trees. Eventually the Indians came—the Canarsies, a branch of the Lenni Lenape—and after them the Dutch settlers who, in 1625, founded the town of Nieuw Amsterdam on neighboring Manhattan Island. Eleven years later, some of them, dissatisfied with the rocky Manhattan soil, took a look at the good growing land on the heights across the river and decided to buy some from the Canarsies. They called the west end Breukelen, meaning "broken valley," after a town in the Old Country, and laid out tiny farming villages on Gowanus Creek and on the flatlands of Jamaica Bay, where salty sea grasses could be harvested for cattle. They established fortified farmhouses on Newtown Creek and Wallabout Bay, and in hundreds of small-scale agreements with the Indians they gradually bought up more and more of the country, working their way eastward out to New Lofts and Bushwick. The area closest to the harbor, named Clover Hill, was soon dotted with orchards and pastures, with a few houses clustered near the river on the village's main street. Also at that spot was a ferry landing with service running from what eventually became the Fulton Ferry Landing to Peck Slip in Manhattan. In the eighteenth century this ferry, main artery to Manhattan, was to become the nucleus of Brooklyn life.

By 1660 the Dutch had pieced together six towns: Flatlands (originally Nieuw Amersfoort), Boswijk (the "town of woods"), 's Gravensande ("the Count's beach"), t'Vlache Bos, Nieuw Utrecht, and Breukelen proper. When the English took Manhattan, four years later, they mangled the Dutch name into "Brooklyn," 's Gravensande into Gravesend, Boswijk into Bushwick, and t'Vlache Bos into Flatbush, and over time bestowed names on what would become individual neighborhoods: Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Red Hook, Yellow Hook (renamed Bay Ridge in 1850, and site of Fort Hamilton, where both Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had been stationed in the '40's, the former serving as a vestryman at St. John's Episcopal Church, where the latter was baptized), Crow Hill, Mount Prospect, Cypress Hills; Greenpoint, Williamsburgh (which eventually lost its terminal 'h'), Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Brownsville, Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sea Gate, Canarsie, East New York, New Lofts, and more than fifty others.

In the eighteenth century, Brooklyn (then known as Kings County) was a quiet farming area, many of its properties held by families to whom the land had been granted under Dutch patents in the 1600's; small villages such as Flatbush, Bedford, and Bushwick dotted the countryside. During the Revolution, Clover Hill, by then known as Brooklyn Heights, was in a strategic spot because of its commanding position over the harbor. George Washington ordered construction of several forts in Brooklyn, including Fort Sterling, which overlooked the East River channel from Clark Street and Columbia Heights. Fort Greene wasn't in the neighborhood that now went by that name, but sat between State and Schermerhorn Streets. Brooklyn Heights had become a critical military zone. But despite the heavy fortifications, the British met with little resistance from American troops. On August 29, 1776, a war council met at the Philip Livingston mansion, which was reached by a lane about on the line of Joralemon Street; Garden Place was eventually named for the elegant gardens maintained alongside. Afterward, Washington ordered his troops to withdraw in the dead of night across the river to Manhattan. Anything that could float was pressed into service, and what resulted was one of the most successful retreats in the history of warfare. For some six and a half years following the Battle of Long Island, the British occupied Brooklyn. During that time, they built the largest of their forts there, on a site stretching from Monroe Place to Henry Street and from a spot south of Pierrepont Street halfway to Clark. They also confiscated the Livingston property for use as a hospital, turning its gardens into burial grounds for the more unfortunate patients. Stories still circulated about bones being found in the backyards of Garden Place houses.

In 1776 the total population was about 3700, nearly a third of them black slaves, for both cotton and tobacco were grown in the county, and this was proportionately the highest slave population north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Other farm produce, too, went hence to Manhattan, ranging from fresh milk to beer from the breweries and meat from the slaughterhouses. There was a popular racetrack in Flatlands, and Flatbush was already noted for Erasmus Hall Academy, a private school that had begun under the Dutch in the 1650's and was renamed when its "new" plant was built in 1787 as "the Eton of Long Island"—and would still be standing two centuries on, using the same hip-roofed, clapboard-sided, two-and-a-half-storey Federal-style building, and enrolling students. Established for boys only (it enrolled 105 of them in 1795), it was a private school, and would remain one till 1896. Across Flatbush Avenue from it was an old Reformed Church (which had donated the land for it), with a cemetery, still in use for new interments, whose gravestones continued to be inscribed in Dutch even today. Also in Flatbush stood an elaborate Georgian mansion built by a family named Lane, later named Melrose Hall, which became the source of ghost stories for generations of neighborhood children, some of them concerning American soldiers, taken prisoner during the Revolution, who supposedly died in chains in its deep cellars.

Less than a generation after the Revolution, Brooklyn was a true city and Brooklyn Heights had become a small neighborhood near its center. Progress had arrived and in the early 1800's, as New York became a great port, Brooklyn rode along on a wave of prosperity. As the new century dawned, the new rich of the place began to acquire much of the land in the Heights overlooking Manhattan, until soon a few large landowners occupied almost all that section. Among the more prominent of the prospering merchants was one Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont. In 1802 he bought part of the old Livingston estate and, anticipating the eventual incorporation of Brooklyn village, hired a surveyor to lay out his property into streets: Clinton, Clark, Montague, Remsen, Joralemon and, of course, Pierrepont, thus immortalizing his neighbors and increasing his fortune.

During the War of 1812, New Yorkers, fearing a British attack and a second disastrous occupation of their city, built new forts and repaired old ones, among them Fort Putnam in Brooklyn, which had been initially erected as the main bastion of the Revolutionary-era defenses. The whole population turned out to give a hand; according to one historian, "rich and poor, all ranks and professions, without any exception, assisted with spades, wheelbarrows, and other implements; in one place, the lawyers; in another the merchants; there the different branches of mechanics; the ladies came in crowds to distribute refreshments; bands of music were playing..." Even a seventy-two-year-old woman pushed a barrow. The attack never materialized, and after the war the fort—which had been renamed Greene—slowly decayed, while around the hilly area that surrounded it, rowhouses (most frame, occasionally brick) and country villas were built, spreading outward from the stage (and later omnibus) lines along Myrtle Avenue and Fulton Street. The city fathers designated the five principal north-to-south streets of this area with the names of renowned streets and terraces of contemporaneous London (Portland, Oxford, Cumberland, Carlton, and Adelphi), and the east-to-west ones in honor of several generals of the Revolution (Willoughby, DeKalb, Lafayette, Greene, and Gates). Beginning in the '50's, substantial middle-class brick and brownstone rowhouses in the Italianate style began to fill in the numerous vacant lots and replace some of the villas.

Meanwhile, between the Revolution and 1820, the population of Kings County jumped from 5000 to 11,000, then to 21,000 in 1830 and 32,000 in '35, two years after Brooklyn was incorporated and one after it was granted a city charter; most of the newcomers settled in the East River towns of Brooklyn and next-door Williamsburg. After 1815, factories began to spring up along the river: privately-owned ship-building docks, rope-making factories, glue factories, leather-goods factories, hat-making operations, a glassworks, distilleries, sugar refineries, whale-oil refineries, breweries, grain elevators. Two newspapers were established: the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Brooklyn City News. The New African Society for Mutual Relief, one of the first all-black abolitionist societies, was founded in 1808; a black doctor, by the name of Gilbert Gilberts, commenced practice two years later; a black school was opened in 1815, and a black church the next year. An independent community of free middle-class blacks, known as Weeksville, was established in the '30's on Crow Hill, on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and was soon followed by another, Carrville; here, it was said, no whites lived at all, "except those who kept stores and got rich off them." Oddly, the greatest wave of "immigrants" came not from any foreign land, but from New England, particularly Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, including Quentin's uncle's father, who arrived in 1809. The Louisiana Purchase had doubled the nation's size only half a dozen years earlier, and as the frontier moved westward into the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, New York, even before the building of the Erie Canal, began to develop into a major port and financial center. It had always been mercantile, having been founded by the Dutch and further developed by the English, two nations of traders, merchants, and shopkeepers, which perhaps partly explained the harmoniousness with which they associated and intermarried. Even before 1776 the place had the salty air of a seaport, and a modest skyline of warehouses, distilleries, and sugar houses, broken by an occasional church spire or cupola, while public buildings like King's College (later Columbia) and the Federal-style City Hall, with its rich Classical ornament, gave it distinction. John Singleton Copley, then establishing himself as a portrait painter, declared that the city had more "grand buildings" than Boston and that its Dutch architecture gave it charm. Fine houses in the Georgian tradition had early been raised, and country estates laid out on Murray Hill, on Mount Pleasant, along Turtle Bay and the banks of the Hudson, on Long Island and Staten Island, and even in New Jersey, the choice of the Livingstons. The city was also known, from an early date, for its crime: in 1749 a newspaper commented, "It seems to be now become dangerous for the good People of this City, to be out late at Nights, without being sufficiently strong and well armed, as several Attacks and Disturbances have been lately made in our Streets." It had suffered badly from the Revolution: from a prosperous place with 25,000 inhabitants in 1776, seven years later it had dropped to 12,000, many living in "Canvas Town," a miserable collection of shanties and huts in the southeast section, created by leaning spars up against the chimneys and walls remaining of the houses destroyed by two disastrous fires, then draping canvas over them. But it recovered rapidly: by 1790 its population had shot up to 33,000, and nearly 2000 new dwellings had been built—a figure to which, four years later, 4000 more had been added. There was a philharmonic society as early as 1799, and performances of oratorios five years later. By 1800 it was the second most populous city in the Union, excelled only by Philadelphia (Boston had slipped to third), and had grown northward a full mile from the Battery, while Broadway, seventy feet wide, extended as far as Astor Place. Even at century's beginning it had a metropolitan flavor; trade boomed and the hostelries were well rated by travelers in a position to understand such things, and there was a poorhouse and a hospital which also cared for some 200 foundlings, who wore no "particular dress" because the city fathers "wished to spare them humiliation." Although "whole sections of streets" were "given over to street-walkers," the people were described generally as "refined and amiable," and the city as "the pleasantest of all places in the U.S. in which to live." Its greatest days were yet to come, after the completion of the Erie Canal gave it easy access to the interior of the country, making it a close neighbor of the West. But Mr. Bainsley, already a successful player in the shipping trade, decided to take a chance on the place as it was, hoping he might be able to get in a bit closer to the ground floor, and not have as much competition as Boston offered. He didn't work in Manhattan, though business often took him there, and so he naturally settled in Brooklyn. At first only Brooklyn Heights and the area around the ferry resembled a city, and most people lived within three-quarters of a mile of the latter. But that changed soon enough: in 1840 the city boasted 48,000 persons, in 1850 138,882 (almost three times as many), and in 1860 279,000 (more than twice that again). In 1855, having long enjoyed a strong rivalry with Williamsburg as to which would be the dominant city in Kings County, Brooklyn won by absorbing both it and Bushwick.

Even before that, it had become one of the earliest "bedroom communities," and New York's first suburb., attracting Wall Street bankers and merchants who preferred to take the ferry ride to Brooklyn Heights rather than endure the long, dusty trip to the pastoral Bronx—or even the fashionable neighborhoods in northern Manhattan. Brooklynites, rich and middle-class alike, usually worked in downtown Manhattan, and the city's omnibus lines and horse-drawn street railroads converged at the several ferries. Real-estate advertisements always stressed the property's proximity to what wasn't yet called "mass transit," in phrases such as "Omnibuses pass by every few minutes" or "within ten minutes' ride of either ferry." To ensure the success of his residential development, Hezekiah Pierrepont had secured the existing leases of all the Brooklyn ferries and granted operating leases on them to his friend, Robert Fulton. The first of the steam ferries, the Nassau, commenced service on May 1, 1814, at a cost of four cents for the trip—or ten dollars for a year's "commutation" ticket, which, assuming a six-day workweek, amounted to a savings of some sixty per cent. In the same year were introduced the "team boats," more often called horse boats after their power source—one to four teams of horses trudging around in tight circles, turning a drive shaft which in turn turned the paddlewheels. For years commuters preferred these; they were just as fast and roomy as the steamcraft, but easier to navigate, steadier, and more reliable in foul weather. Most of the boats were double-hulled, with the paddlewheels mounted in the center; foot passengers rode on one side, vehicles on the other, and one deck above them were the men's and women's cabins, each with coal stove. When tides were strong or the river clogged with ice, the trip could take up to an hour; when conditions were perfect, it ran as little as four minutes; and on the average it consumed twelve. The boats, described as "spacious, beautiful, and fast," ran from early morning till midnight, allowing Brooklynites to not only work and shop in the larger city, but to visit friends and relatives there, attend parties and the theater, and generally look on New York as more or less their own back yard. The Nassau, and her later counterparts, came to be called the "Fulton Street ferry," after the Brooklyn street at whose foot they landed, although a boat had been running roughly the same route, somewhat less regularly, since 1650, setting out from what was now the foot of Joralemon Street. A second line, the so-called Navy Yard Ferry, joined the first one three years later and ran between Jackson Street in Manhattan and Hudson Avenue in Brooklyn till 1856. After a hiatus, it was re-established in 1859 to follow almost exactly the route of the old Walnut Street Ferry, begun in 1817. Two boats serviced Manhattan's South Ferry: in 1836 a route was opened from Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue (formerly Atlantic Street), and a decade later the Hamilton Avenue began leaving from that street in South Brooklyn, carrying commuters for a penny during the rush hour and the rest of the day shipping goods from Red Hook factories to Manhattan warehouses. The Peck Slip Ferry had operated between Manhattan's Peck Slip and Broadway for twenty-four years beginning in 1836, and the North Second Street for a decade early in the century, between Metropolitan Avenue and Manhattan's Rivington Street. The Catherine Ferry reversed the usual custom, being named for its Manhattan end, at Catherine Street (its Brooklyn landing was at the foot of Main Street); originally established as the New Ferry in 1795 (to supplement the Fulton line), it was sold in 1853 to the Union Ferry Company. So did the Wall Street Ferry, which plied between that Manhattan landing and Montague Street beginning in 1853; the Roosevelt Street, which ran for half a dozen years, beginning the same year, to Bridge Street; and the Gouverneur Street, which ran from Gouverneur Slip to Hudson Avenue (later Bridge Street) between 1850 and '57. Williamsburg was served by several ferry lines of its own: the Grand Street, between two streets of that name, which commenced operations even before steam came in, in 1797, and for that reason, perhaps, contributed to the community's self-important sense of destiny; the Roosevelt Street, which ran from 1853 until 1859, moved its Brooklyn terminus from South 10th Street to Broadway, and then was replaced by the Bridge Street from James Slip in Manhattan; the Houston Street, inaugurated in 1840, which linked Williamsburg's Grand Street to Manhattan's Houston. Greenpoint also had its own connections: in 1852 the 10th Street had begun running between that Manhattan landing and Greenpoint Avenue, and five years later it began to share the latter with the 23rd Street. Each line had its ferry tavern serving as an important sideline to its trade.

Early in the '20's, with regular connections in place, a rush began to build low-cost single-family houses, which continued for over thirty years. On Brooklyn Heights, poised on a high bluff overlooking the East River and the bay, a half-score of landowners—Middagh, Hicks, Waring, Kimberly, Swirtcope, Jackson, deBevaise, Remsen, Joralemon, and of course Hezekiah Pierrepont—laid out a grid of streets, bounded on the north by Front Street, on the south by District Street (later Atlantic), and inland by Main and Fulton Streets and Red Hook Lane, and divided their farms into 25x100 rowhouse lots, which were advertised as being ideally located for businessmen who had to make the daily commute to Manhattan on the new steam ferry. Well-to-do merchants, many of whom did work in Manhattan, flocked to build Federal-style brick and wooden homes on them, attracted by the easy walk to the ferry and the spectacular view of New York Bay. Montague Street was the heart of the Heights; originally called Constable, it had been renamed in honor of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had brought the practice of smallpox vaccination to England after observing it in Turkey while her husband was King George I's ambassador there. In the '30's and '40's, handsome Greek Revival homes filled many blocks, and many fine dwellings were also built along Columbia Street, later named Columbia Heights, at the foot of the bluff. The Heights flourished and the open space between its buildings continued to close. As a result, some if its less well-to-do citizens petitioned the Legislature to buy out the owners of land at the bottom of Clark, Pineapple and Middagh Street, opening the waterfront to the public, as the Pierreponts had already done at the foot of Pierrepont Street. The bill was approved, and so were created the present wide entrances to the Promenade off Columbia Heights.

By the '40's rowhouse construction extended beyond Atlantic Avenue (a fine shopping street) and down to Degraw Street, into what was then known as South Brooklyn—it had been productive farmland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, largely held under original Dutch patents—but had by now been renamed Cobble Hill. Like its neighbor to the south, Carroll Gardens, it grew slowly, over several decades, and featured a remarkable variety of architectural styles, first the Greek Revival of the '20's and '30's, then the Gothic of the '40's, and most recently Italianate and Second Empire in the '50's. Both neighborhoods were similar to the Heights, with handsome, human-scaled three- and four-storey-plus-basement dwellings—solid, spacious, even elegant—and sunny, tree-lined streets. Cobble Hill's largest houses were built on Clinton and Henry Streets, which ran north to south, and modest ones on such east-to-west streets as Warren, Baltic, and Kane and on the unusual one-block-long north-to-south "Places" like Cheever, Strong, and Tompkins. A common construction pattern was three sixteen-foot-eight rowhouses, often Anglo-Italianate, on two standard twenty-five-foot lots; some of these narrow houses were built as a speculation by professional men, like Nos. 206-224 Kane Street, Nos. 10-12 Tompkins Place, and Nos. 301-313 Clinton Street, where eighteen fourteen-to-fifteen-foot-wide rowhouses were put up in 1849-54 by a lawyer named Gerard W. Morris. In Carroll Gardens the rowhouses, large-scale construction of which began around 1850, shared street space with pitched-roof frame farmhouses and one-time comfortable country houses that had been built by well-to-do merchants and gentleman farmers after scheduled ferry service began in 1820. Their prices varied according to dimensions and number of storeys, with a two-storey 16x22-foot example (with a stable on the rear of the lot) to be advertised at $1000 in 1872, while a four-storey brownstone, 25x50, cost $35,000.

Over Hamilton Avenue from Carroll Gardens was Red Hook, where large-scale commercial development had preceded the former's rowhouse boom. Starting in the late '30's, a cotton-wadding factory, a brickyard, distilleries, and warehouses were built there. The Atlantic Docks, Atlantic Basin, and Erie Basin & Dry Docks were located there too, all major shipbuilding and dock facilities. As these appeared, street after street of modest brick or frame houses were erected for ships' crews and workmen and their families. By the '60's, on Court Street below the line of Fourth Place, three-storey-and-basement houses and stores were everywhere in various stages of construction, sometimes covering entire blocks. Just south of Fourth Place, and so within the boundaries of Carroll Gardens, more modest brickfront rowhouses harbored workmen and their dependents.

The '20's-and-onward boom was also seen in less select neighborhoods further inland, such as Adams Street, where cheap but decent wooden cottages and double houses, separated by narrow side yards—each three full storeys under a shallow-pitched gable-end roof—were thrown up at a rate of 200 per year. Many of the houses in outlying districts, especially Williamsburg, were constructed en masse by speculative builders who often offered a congregation a site for their church at no cost. This site was usually at the center of the builder's tract, and once the church was established, the lots around it generally sold off rapidly; this tended to give the area's neighborhoods a very heterogenous look long before the great Southern and Eastern European immigrations that established a great patchwork of ethnic ones. North of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, the peninsula that leaned into the East River toward 23rd Street, was so isolated from the rest of Brooklyn that even after Congress had authorized free in-city delivery of mail earlier this year, its residents had to pay an extra two cents a letter to get theirs, or else troop down to the post office in Williamsburg to pick it up. It was a neighborhood of modest pretensions, which in years to come would attract thousands of Middle Europeans to work in its foundries, potteries, and gas-works and live in its three- and four-storey houses; yet it was also a citadel of beer barons and sugar-refinery owners, many of the former middle-class German Jews. Its chief claim to fame was Bedford Avenue, on which stood an eighty-foot community fire-tower manned day and night by watchmen ready to sound a bell at the slightest hint of fire in Greenpoint or Williamsburg, and down which, in 1859, the body of John Brown had been carried on its way to the farm near Lake Placid where it was to be interred.

By the '40's, rowhouse construction in Brooklyn had spread eastward from the Heights to an elevated area known as "The Hill" (later to be the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and a small slice of Bedford-Stuyvesant), whose rolling countryside was even then dotted with suburban villas and frame rowhouses, served by stagecoaches which, for six-and-a-quarter cents, would take you to the Fulton Ferry in fifteen or twenty minutes' time. Roughly bounded on the north by Willoughby Avenue, on the east by South Portland Avenue, on the south by Atlantic Avenue, and on the west by Franklin Avenue, it was in mid-century a pleasant residential district second in fashion only to the patrician Heights. In 1849 the Jackson homestead, stretching from Washington Park and DeKalb Avenue in the north to St. James Street on the south, and bounded on the west by Navy and Fulton Streets, had been cut up into some thirteen or fourteen residential blocks, the lots on which were offered for auction, and soon suburban villas and occasional frame and brick rowhouses began to rise in the neighborhood that was eventually to be known as Fort Greene. Although some wealthy families lived in the mansions along Clinton and Washington Avenues or in the splendid brownstone-front rowhouses around the edges of Fort Greene Park, The Hill was largely the home of prosperous business and professional men. Broad, tree-shaded Clinton Avenue, at the highest point of the area, was (not illogically) the most fashionable street on The Hill; by the '30's and '40's, large frame Gothic and Italian villas and country houses and occasional mansions on spacious grounds lined it, but after the war palatial sixteen- and eighteen-room brownstone rowhouses and detached Mansard mansions would begin to replace them, and in 1871, four-storey brownstones of the "high-stoop French-roof" style—each with "independent laundry, two bath-rooms, three water-closets, eight wash-basins, butler's pantry...eighteen rooms, twelve pantries," and hot-air furnace, located fifteen to twenty minutes by the Green Avenue horsecar from the Fulton Ferry—would be advertised at from $25,000 to $35,000, one-half cash down.

As the century reached its midpoint, Brooklyn enjoyed rapid population growth and a frenzied building boom. And although a surprisingly large number of rich families lived there, in palatial rowhouses or countrified mansions, the place was chiefly renowned for street after street of substantial middle-class dwellings. The most fashionable residential district was Brooklyn Heights, which was to remain its most aristocratic neighborhood into the late century. The finest homes were built along Columbia Heights, Montague Street, Montague Terrace, and Remsen Street. Men of "solid respectability and well-lined simplicity," often bankers and merchants who worked in lower Manhattan, favored its quiet tree-lined streets and fine Greek Revival and Italianate rowhouses. They looked down on the "vigorous, voluble, somewhat less respectable population" nearby and enjoyed a gracious lifestyle. They took the Fulton or Atlantic Street ferry early in the morning and left work at three o'clock to be home for dinner at four. Well-to-do women preferred to shop on glamorous Broadway rather than in downtown Brooklyn, and after the morning rush hour their carriages jammed the ferries for shopping or visiting in "the city." In the evening the family might go to the theater or the Academy of Music, or, in good weather, for a carriage ride to Green-Wood Cemetery or the countryside around what would become (in the late '60's) Prospect Park. Walt Whitman declared that Brooklyn enjoyed "the best quality and cheapest priced gas—the best water in the world—a prospect of moderate taxation," and elected officials who "will compare favorably with any of similar position in the United States." In the '40's ailanthus trees were imported from China to New Jersey in the hope that their leaves would provide a happy home for silkworms. The worms ignored them, but they proved to be especially adaptable to city life, and Brooklyn was a place where they flourished; Whitman, editing the Eagle, spoke of the "plentifulness" of its trees. William Makepeace Thackeray captivated the town by calling it "a pretty, tranquil place entirely different from New York." Baseball had been played as an amateur sport since the '50's; there were the Favorites and the Excelsiors, known as gentlemen's clubs, and the not-so-gentlemanly Atlantics, whose 200 members were all registered Democrats. Brooklynites could boast of their hometown as the starting point of the first baseball tour, a team having set out from there in 1860 to play counterparts in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Ice skating was the sports fad of the current decade, and when the first rinks were built for it, they were used for baseball in the summer. On Joralemon Street was the noted Brooklyn Female Academy, founded in 1845, where 500 young women studied and graduated as men did; when it burned down, on New Year's Day, 1853, it was rebuilt as the Packer Collegiate Institute (after the deceased husband of the woman who contributed $65,000 for the effort), and reopened under that name in November of '54.

By 1855, the new City of Brooklyn was the third-largest in the nation, boasting over 200,000 inhabitants. Many of them were German or Irish, and there was a German Town near Wallabout Bay (the site of the Navy Yard) and an Irish Town below the Heights, near the ferry-slip. Six years later, Brooklyn was no longer exclusively rural, yet both the city itself and New York City were still fed largely by Kings County and Long Island farms (a situation that was to persist as late as the '80's); and Bay Ridge, just above the Narrows, was to remain rural into the '70's, when the newly-rich industrial barons began buying up real estate there and lining the bluffs with castles, plantation houses, and everything in between. Overlooking the Narrows was Fort Lafayette, which was currently serving as a prison for Confederate POW's, among them (somewhat ironically) a nephew of Robert E. Lee. Flatbush, just east of Prospect Park, was still a country town, and its newspaper was aptly named the Rural Gazette; at first a stagecoach left it for Brooklyn at eight A.M. and returned at four P.M., being eventually replaced by horse-drawn omnibuses departing every hour on the hour. As for Flatlands (south of Flatbush), Gravesend (just north of Coney Island), and New Utrecht (northwest of Gravesend), they were outlying towns far removed from the bustle of the waterfront, with hundreds of acres of farmland. The village of East New York, almost on the eastern county line, afforded, as Whitman said, "superior inducements to families who desire to be just out of the city, and yet within an hour's reach of it." A waterworks had been built nearby, as had the Union Race Course. Coney Island—which had been completely washed out to sea in the great storm of New Year's Day, 1839—had restored itself by the early '40's, and in that decade a farsighted innkeeper had built a clamshell causeway (with toll-gate) out to it and opened the Coney Island House, where such noted persons as Washington Irving, Herman Melville, P. T. Barnum, Jenny Lind, and the "Great Triumvirate" of Congress, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, had visited. Other hotels, including a number of small family ones, quickly followed this pioneer, and before long crowds were arriving just to spend a day at the beach. On one Fourth of July, which happened to be a Sunday, the tollkeeper counted over 300 vehicles. Some Brooklyn townspeople called this "a shameful breach of the Sabbath peace."

Country connections notwithstanding, Brooklyn was also a thriving manufacturing city, with foundries, sugar refineries (notably the Havemeyer and Elder), and other industrial buildings competing in the skyline with its noted church steeples. There were banks and mills and merchants' establishments, and—until the war broke out—factories that turned out carriages, harness, and cheap cotton cloth "exclusively for the Southern trade." From Greenpoint down to the Gowanus Canal, docks, warehouses, grain elevators, and—particularly above the Navy Yard—brick buildings housing flour mills, bakeries, a porcelain factory, and dozens of breweries lined the East River, interspersed with shipyards that had built Hudson River steamers and China clippers in the '40's, and now were turning out many ironclads for the war effort (New Yorkers took special pride in the fact that the Monitor had been built and launched in Brooklyn); the Navy Yard was so well established as to be considered a possible target for Confederate ambitions, and 6000 men labored there. There was a thriving community of Norwegians, mostly employed in the shipyards and living near Gowanus Creek and the Erie Basin. There were also tobacco factories near the ferry, one owned by Watson, the other by Lorillard, and both furnishing employment for many local blacks. Indeed, Watson employed only blacks, and only this past August, a month after the draft riots turned Manhattan's streets to chaos, a mob of between two and three thousand white demonstrators had appeared at Lorillard's gates and demanded that the blacks there be fired. Lorillard officals knuckled under, and the mob moved on to the Watson plant, where they smashed windows and broke in the doors. The black workers retreated to the second floor, and while the mob was trying to set the place on fire the police arrived. Across Buttermilk Channel from Red Hook, on Governor's Island, a fort designed by Benjamin Franklin's grand-nephew pointed its cannon toward Wall Street.

Brooklyn in 1847 was a city of over 60,000, a quiet, respectable community with some fine residential streets. It took pride in being a separate, independent, autonomous city with its own mayor and municipal government, physically and emotionally far removed from Manhattan across the river. It had two notable newspapers, the Daily Eagle, which in 1845 was the leading one, and the Daily Times, both of which Walt Whitman edited, though not simultaneously. Despite a long-standing tradition of waterfront brawling, it believed itself morally superior to Manhattan, while Manhattan regarded Brooklyn as a bit frumpish for its taste—which did nothing to prevent many a countryman, coming to "the city" to "make his fortune," from finding that he could neither master the metropolis nor feel safe in it (prosperity notwithstanding), and moving, therefore, to Brooklyn. It was in '47 that Quentin's uncle, John Bainsley, bought his house (already fifteen years old) in Brooklyn Heights and moved into it with his wife and their four-year-old son, two-year-old twin daughters, and staff. The building was advertised with running water, range and boiler, bath, water closets, dumbwaiter "from basement to attic," coal-burning furnace (which heated only the basement and the parlor floor by way of cast-iron or brass floor or wall "registers," and inefficiently at that, in uneven blasts of scorching air mixed with gas and soot), and gas lighting; Bainsley had the latter two taken out, preferring to rely on fireplaces, Franklin stoves, and old-fashioned whale oil. In 1850 he added a verandah and ironwork and some fashionable Gothic details on the "parlor floor," and three years later, with his family growing (he had two more sons by then), he took his family to Saratoga for the summer and had another floor added on in their absence. His wife was the youngest of the three Linton sisters, Marian (born in 1814), Amy (1818), and Mary Alice (1823), daughters of a notable New York family of merchants and professionals, mostly of English and Dutch ancestry, known for their grace, wit, and cleverness, who had married, respectively, Judson Colville (Quentin's father), Herbert Lacey, and Bainsley.

"What business is your uncle in again?" Slim asked. "I'm sure you told me, but it's been a while."

"His father started out in shipping," Quentin replied. "He began as a cabin boy, as a lot of men did, then a common sailor, then worked his way up through the ranks of third, second, and chief mate to captain. He was a master at twenty-two, and put in sixteen years commanding ships afterward, plowing his profits back into more ships until he owned thirty-five of them—fifteen ships, seven barques, and thirteen brigs and schooners. By the time he came down here, he was already a rich man from the transatlantic and Caribbean trade and whaling, and he also had a factory that produced sperm oil and candles. He soon got into the China trade too, and then he decided it made sense to build his own ships as well as run them, so he wouldn't have to pay shipbuilders' profits to get his primary tools. And from there he went into manufacturing rope, because such a lot of it is used on a sailing ship. Uncle John and his two brothers all went to sea when they were young—brought home all kinds of souveniers, you'll see some of them in the house; then when their father died in '38 they inherited the family businesses and eventually agreed to share out the managing chores between them, though the profits are divided evenly among the three households. Uncle John got the shipyard, which is only a few blocks from the Navy Yard; it's doing subcontracting work for the Navy now. He's very active in the Sanitary Commission, too, and so is Aunt Alice—her family always called her Alice, so people wouldn't mis-hear and think they were talking about Mother, who was Marian. His brother Henry supervises the trading, and Laurence looks after the rope business and the candle factory and oil refinery. They gave up the whaling; a lot of the whales have been killed off, and there's much less demand for sperm oil since camphene and coal oil came in."

"And how many in the family?" Slim pursued.

"Uncle John, Aunt Alice, and seven children. Five sons, two daughters. Marcus is the oldest; he's twenty, in college—Princeton; he'll graduate in the spring. Lydia and Eleanor are just out last May. Everett's fourteen, and then there are the three little ones, Charles and Hiram and John Jr., eleven and nine and six." Somewhere not far off a church bell began to toll the hour. Both men pulled out their watches. "My Lord, midnight," said Quentin. "We ought to turn in. Happy New Year, Slim."

"May it bring an end to this war," the younger man muttered.

**SR**

Friday, New Year's Day, 1864, dawned—or perhaps didn't quite—gray and cold, with a light but stinging snow whipping along on a gusty, blustery wind, and a light chop on the Bay. The wind brought a brighter flame to Slim's already high-colored cheeks and filled his nose with the salt odor of the sea. The Pavonia ferry was a sidewheeler, like most inland craft east of the Appalachians; it wallowed and rolled a bit in the tossing waves, but Slim, to his immense relief, discovered that it didn't seem to bother him. He was, however, very glad of his warm military overcoat, and not just for the sea wind: as he and Quentin took a cab from the Catherine Street slip, around the perimeter of City Hall Park, and on across Lower Manhattan to the Fulton Ferry landing, which was almost exactly opposite where they'd disembarked, the vehicle swayed in the wind that came whistling down between the blocks of four- and five-storey buildings like a flash flood coming down a ravine, sweeping all things before it. They retreated to the ferry tavern to wait for the boat in the cozy warmth. Patronage was thin-spread: the first of the year might not be a legal holiday, but most employers observed it as one, and people stayed at or near home rather than commuting.

The crossing to Brooklyn was longer than the Pavonia route, and somewhat rougher because the East River was considerably narrower than the Hudson; squeezed in between the tip of Long Island and that of Manhattan, the water swirled and eddied and churned as it flowed down to meet the Bay, and for most of a mile the boat had to beat into the current, its engines laboring. Slim managed not to disgrace himself, although he half thought he would several times, and he was very glad to step ashore at last. The street leading down to the Brooklyn Ferry landing was wide enough for three two-horse wagons parked crosswise, and lined with four-storey buildings, including the offices of the Eagle. Two or three one-horse cabs were waiting near the tavern, their drivers bundled up against the wind slicing in off the water. One, wearing a heavy blue overcoat and fur gloves, with a woollen muffler tied over his ears beneath a jaunty brown beaver hat, waved his whip. "Mister Quentin! And is it yourself indeed, now?"

"Declan MacAlister!" Quentin shouted back. "I'd heard you'd gone with the Irish Brigade."

"And so I had," the cabbie agreed, "but precious few of us there were after that donnybrook at Gettysburg, and I'd a Minié ball through me leg besides, so home they sent me. Climb aboard, sir, and Cearul and I will have you home in no time."

"Are you sure they'll be there?" Quentin asked as he waved Slim into the vehicle. "We might have done better to wait a day or two, but we only have thirty days' leave."

"Ach," said MacAlister, "well ye know Miss Alice's opinion of the New Year's callin', and so do her friends. With the young ladies, she's obliged to entertain, but her own visitin' will be done in days to come, as it always is." As his passengers settled themselves on the seat, he snapped his whip, and the horse, an iron gray with a black mane and tail, set off at a brisk trot, up Fulton Street hill, then right onto Henry Street, weaving deftly through a confusion of carriages.

"Why all the traffic?" Slim asked, peering out at the crush.

"I'm afraid it's a New York custom," Quentin explained. "New Year's Day calls. The Dutch started it, and it spread from there; the English picked it up, and then the Federal government when New York was the national capitol—every President since Washington has felt obliged to open his official residence to all and sundry on this day; Mr. Lincoln and his lady will be doing it too. Every family states the hours it'll be 'at home,' and all its friends are expected to call, partake of food and drink, and exchange good wishes. But of course the family has to make its own calls during its friends' announced hours, and what results is what you see—people rushing frantically from house to house for fear that a neglected visit will cause offense. Uncle John and Aunt Alice and their circle don't believe in it much, maybe because they have money enough not to have to compete; they have open house because it's expected, but the callers they get are more acquaintances than friends. That, and swains, of course—Lydia and Eleanor have more than their share, as you'll appreciate when you meet them."

"This driver obviously knows the family pretty well," Slim noted.

Quentin grinned. "He's our cook's cousin. He's been our favorite cabbie for twenty years."

The cab clattered up Henry Street past block after block of rowhouse façades, turned left onto Montague, and pulled up at the carriage-block outside a four-storey-plus-attic-and-basement Greek Revival building with lacy ironwork trim, MacAlister deftly sliding into the space just behind a departing dog-cart. The two young men climbed out and Quentin passed the fare up and received a jaunty salute of the driver's whip in return. A moment later he was gone, and Slim and Quentin were climbing the tall steps to the handsome doorway porch, where Quentin tugged on the bell-pull and was quickly answered by a maid in a black "afternoon" dress with white collar and cuffs, set off by a white apron and a matching ruffled cap with a bow of ribbon on it. "Good day to ye, gentlemen—" she began, and then her eyes got big and she gasped. "Mister Quentin!"

"Greetings of the day, Katie Rose," Quentin said, grinning. "I won't ask if they're in."

The flustered maid whirled and dashed away, leaving them standing in the six-foot-square vestibule. Quentin chuckled. "She's a good girl, and it takes quite a bit to overturn her. But I've always wanted to try, and this time it looks like I've succeeded. Come on, Slim." He pulled the outer door shut and led the way into the long hallway, hung with steel prints—St. Cecelia, a Landseer stag, and a congress of American authors—and equipped with a small table, a pair of chairs, a shapely upholstered settee, and the inevitable hatstand. Toward the back of it, past the two doors on the left, an ornately carved staircase rose toward the upper floors. From the nearer door came sudden girlish squeals of delight, and a pair of young women, one a red-black brunette with light golden-brown eyes, the other with golden hair and bright, clear blue ones, came flying out, followed more decorously by the maid and a tall man in late middle age. The girls threw themselves at the laughing Quentin, who hugged them both with no hint of self-consciousness.

"Why didn't you write and tell us you were coming?" demanded the golden-haired one.

"Wasn't sure I was, till just a few days ago," Quentin replied. "Doesn't seem that young-ladyhood has changed either of you all that much." He extended his hand to the man. "Hello, Uncle John."

"Quentin. Welcome, as always." He was a courtly, handsome old gentleman, with the graces and fine manners of an earlier day; very tall, very thin, with a beaklike nose and bright, keen gray eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. He had a gripping personal presence and the features and poise of an aristocrat; his clothing might not be the height of fashion—a bottle-green frock coat and checkered trousers, with a gold-and-black brocaded waistcoat—but it had a restrained excellence. "Lydia, Eleanor, you're forgetting your manners. Haven't you noticed that your cousin has brought a friend?"

The girls suddenly seemed to register Slim's presence and blushed, flustered and embarrassed. "This is Lieutenant Matt Sherman, Third Indiana Cavalry," said Quentin. "My cousins, Lydia and Eleanor Bainsley, and their father." Lydia was the blonde, dressed in apple-green silk; dark-haired Eleanor wore pink with rose point lace ruffles.

"Ladies," said Slim, politely removing his hat. "Sir. I have to explain, Quentin insisted I come—"

"No explanations needed, Mr. Sherman," Bainsley assured him. "Anyone Quentin chooses to bring into this house is always welcome. Please come into the parlor and meet Mrs. Bainsley. Sherman? Aren't you the one he's written about? From somewhere out West?"

"Yes, sir. Wyoming. Territories aren't called on to furnish troops, so I had to go East to enlist. I'd meant to sign up in Illinois—that's where I was born—but I happened to pass through Davenport, Iowa, first, so I joined the First Iowa instead, and then got transferred... it gets confusing, I'm afraid."

The front parlor was about seventeen feet wide and twenty-two deep, with a fireplace centering the wall opposite the hall door, made of yellow-veined black marble, flat pilasters supporting a severe and massive mantel with a large gilt-framed mirror above it, reflecting the monumental clock and assortment of conventional objets d'art—floral arrangements, elaborate candleholders containing seldom-lighted candles, a pair of malachite urns, Dresden cups and saucers with blossoms hand-painted on them—ranged along its length, and making the room appear wider than it was. An ornate and heavily sculptured plaster medallion centered the ceiling, supporting a six-arm rococo chandelier, and centering the back wall was a set of sliding pocket doors with frosted-glass panes in them, with elaborate etched foliate designs, reflected by a pier mirror set between the twin front windows; the original door- and window-frames had been replaced or overlaid with broad pointed arches in the Gothic manner, and the fireplace grate had Medieval-looking brass and steel finials and facings. The walls were covered in cream-and-gold French paper with deep borders of dull red and gold, edged by simple baseboards, a plaster cornice, and a modest, unmolded chair-rail; the floor was graced with a Turkey carpet in rich crimson, the windows draped in China-silk curtains that matched. The most elaborate feature of the room was its doors, which were mahogany (from the hall) or rosewood (at the back), with a horizontal entablature above (with several rows of egg-and-dart molding), and crowns of ornate cresting with a shell motif in the middle, supported by pilasters with acanthus-leaf capitals, and an inset panel running their full length, with applied Greek detail. The "parlor set"—two sofas, two armchairs, and a dozen side chairs—was designed in the "French" fashion that had come in with the new decade, but instead of the slippery horsehair that was most popular for the purpose, it was upholstered in heavy plush, much more comfortable to sit on. The receding shelves of the obligatory corner whatnot held an array of family pictures in fancy standing frames, a little china ballerina with a lacelike china skirt, a pair of tiny vases shaped like butterflies, a fairy-sized high-heeled china shoe trimmed with a rose and a perky pink bow, a china piano smaller than a child's hand, a pair of china dogs with round calico spots and golden collars, a green stuffed bird, and an assortment of handsome paperweights. There was a rosewood Chickering piano with mother-of-pearl inlay behind the keyboard, an engraving of Raphael's Transfiguration, a picture of the Parthenon and one of the Three Graces, ancestral portraits in heavy gold frames, a life-size Lorelei on a marble pedestal, plaster casts of Psyche and Apollo, gift books and albums on the table; the room was decorated for the season with festoons of evergreen ropes over the windows, poinsettias in pots, the "holly and ivy" of the carol. To one side of the fireplace, a serving table had been set up, laid with cold meats, pastries, and two silver punchbowls, one filled with the traditional eggnog, the other with claret punch. A handsome woman of about forty stood graciously from her bracket-armed chair as Bainsley and his daughters, the latter clinging one to each arm of their cousin, escorted the guests in. She had milky-white skin, dark brown hair with a blue-black sheen, and gray-blue eyes; her face tapered from a broad, clear brow and sculpted cheekbones to a bluntly-pointed chin, and though she apparently didn't lace too tightly—she had something of the same full figure his own mother kept—she looked, Slim thought, downright queenly in royal purple velvet, with vertical white velvet piping on the skirt and bodice. She wore the fine lace cap that was considered obligatory for married women indoors. "My dear," Bainsley said, "allow me to present Quentin's friend, Lieutenant Sherman of the Third Indiana Cavalry. Mr. Sherman, my wife Alice."

"Ma'am." For an instant Slim wasn't quite sure of the customary thing to do, but Alice Bainsley promptly put him at his ease by extending her hand.

"Welcome to our home, Lieutenant. You must consider yourself one of the family for as long as your leave permits," she said. And, turning to the maid: "Katie Rose, all further callers are to be informed that we are not at home. And please tell Kathleen or Mary Catherine to let Martha know there will be two more for meals till further notice."

"Right away, mum," the maid agreed, dipping a curtsey, and scurried off.

Slim suddenly realized that there was a seventh person in the room, sitting quietly near the pocket doors with a wickerwork sewing basket beside her chair and working on a bobbin-lace project pinned over a pillow on her lap. She wore a simple fawn silk, and her hair was smoothly gathered into a snood that almost succeeded in completely concealing it, but he noticed her flawless ivory skin, so much like Eleanor's that he was sure she had to be related, and an ivory pendant, a ball with other balls inside it, hung at her throat by a black velvet ribbon. Mr. Bainsley seemed at the same moment to realize he hadn't met her. "I do apologize, Lieutenant," he said, escorting his guest to her chair. "My dear, you really must learn to put yourself forward, or you'll live your life being overlooked. Allow me to present Quentin's friend and guest, Lieutenant Sherman. Lieutenant, this is Marjorie Herrington, our governess."

Her hair was red, Slim realized, and she had a perfectly shaped oval face, a lovely curved mouth, and gray eyes with a touch of blue in them, though she barely met his own before returning them to a modestly downcast angle. It was hard to tell with a seated woman, but she struck him as tall for her sex, and slim too. He was immediately intrigued, though he was also practical enough to know that after two and a half years in the army, almost any woman would seem attractive. She offered her hand, almost as if she felt it her duty, and murmured some conventional pleasantry.

"Do take off your coat, Lieutenant, before you swelter," Alice Bainsley urged. "John, perhaps Quentin and his friend would care for something to drink?"

Her husband laughed. "I'm getting as bad as my girls, forgetting my manners just because a very dear nephew has come home for a visit. Eggnog, Mr. Sherman? Or punch?"

"Whatever you're having, sir." Slim smiled in embarrassment as he slipped off his military overcoat, unstrapped his pistol belt, and handed them to Katie Rose, who had unobtrusively reappeared and was already holding Quentin's. "And Mr. Sherman is my father. Most folks around home call me Slim."

"Do they, now?" The man didn't seem to think any the less of him for claiming so countrified a nickname. "And where is home?"

"My parents have a little cattle ranch in Wyoming, eight or ten miles from a settlement called Dancytown, in the Laramie Basin."

"Laramie!" Bainsley echoed. "I've heard of a Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail—"

"That's over the mountains from us. A little under two days' ride on a good horse—about a week if we're drivin' a herd. We Basin ranchers sell a lot of our beef to the Army there, though we started drivin' down to Denver too, after the strikes were made."

"A Westerner indeed!" exclaimed Bainsley in obvious delight. "Yes, I see why Quentin invited you along. He knows I've always been fascinated by the frontier. I'll make you sing for your supper, Slim," he said, and smiled. "Do you have a large family?"

"No, not really." Slim reached inside his blouse for the precious photo case that always lay near his heart. "They had this taken when a travellin' photographer came through in '62. There's Pa," looking solemn and stern in his "best" buckskin coat, worked with blue and red beads, which he'd acquired in his Indian-trading days, black broadcloth pants and a checked shirt underneath, with the brim of his pearl-gray hat rolled to a point in front and a leather band studded with ornamental nails circling the crown, a horn-handled knife at his waist, a black-handled Walker Colt .44 balancing it, "and Ma—" she was wearing what he knew was her favorite thing for going to town in the fall, a gray flannel frock edged with blue at collar, cuffs, and belt— "and my little brother Andy—he'll have turned six last month—and that's Jonesy; he and Pa have been friends since the war with Mexico, and when Pa decided to move us out to Wyoming he came along. You might say he's a sort of uncle to Andy and me." He grinned briefly. "He cooks, too. In fact, he's very good at it; he cooked for trail crews for years. My mother does the preservin' and the fancy bakin', and Jonesy takes care of the plain food."

"You must tell us more of them, Slim," said Alice Bainsley, setting the tone for their relationship, as was the wife's right. "Now please excuse me while I arrange for supper and your baggage; the girls will see that you're entertained."

Privately Slim thought that Lydia and Eleanor, at least, were too delighted at their cousin's unexpected arrival to be the most solicitous of hostesses—not that he blamed them; but he was looking forward to getting to know Marjorie Herrington better, until he realized she'd quietly slipped out of the room while the Bainsleys were looking at the photograph. He wondered why that disappointed him; he'd be here most of a month yet—she wouldn't be able to avoid him forever.

Slim had always been a quiet, serious young man, in part because he'd been effectively an only child for the first fifteen years of his life—and, for a good deal of that time, the "man of the family" while his father was off ramrodding cattle drives from Texas, though they'd had a year-round farmhand who got twenty-five dollars a month from April or May through late November, twenty the rest of the time, to do the heavy work, like plowing and woodcutting. He took the chair Bainsley offered him and sipped his punch, watching as Quentin and his cousins enjoyed each other's company, putting in a word or two when he was invited, but mostly just trying to get used to the family dynamics and personalities. He very quickly realized that though they pretended to be concentrating on Quentin, Lydia and Eleanor were doing more than a little flirting with him—which made him just a bit uneasy: he'd begun going to the local socials when he was seventeen, but that had only given him somewhat over a year to associate with girls before he went off to enlist, and he hadn't had much practice since then with "nice" ones. The Union, at least, had a good many women in its camps: regimental nurses, cooks and laundresses (some of them black, others soldiers' relatives who preferred travelling with the armies—and the steady work, at which they could often make more money than at home—to enduring a life of hardship and constant anxiety at home), female sutlers, vivandières and "daughters of the regiment" (most of the latter the wives of young soldiers), sometimes camp followers. When an army stayed in one place for some time, especially in the off-season, officers were likely to summon their wives—indeed, it was customary for these to visit their husbands whenever they were encamped for any length of time in a safe place, often accompanied by a child or two, and frequently they spent the winter—and local young ladies would come to visit the bachelors. At these times feasts, fancy balls, and concerts were often held. And prostitution, of course, was commonplace in and around every good-sized camp. But except for some of the local ladies, very few of these were at once unattached and equivalent to the kind Slim would have gone with had he been at home—and, of course, there was a lot of competition for the ones who were.

Outside the wind picked up, still carrying dry, stinging flakes of snow, and the pace of traffic quickened as the day's callers tried to cram in all the necessary visits and get home before the weather got any worse. But in the Bainsley parlor the cheery crackle of the fire and the bright, odor-free glow of the old-fashioned sperm oil in the lamps and chandelier made a cozy oasis that seemed far distant from the fierceness of the afternoon. Lydia and Eleanor sat down at the piano and played several pieces for four hands, and their mother came back from her errands. As darkness settled beyond the windows, Mr. Bainsley got up to draw the curtains.

At six everyone headed upstairs to get ready for supper. Another maid, Mary Catherine, showed Slim and Quentin to their quarters, a guest bedroom at the back of the second floor, directly behind the Bainsleys' own; their luggage had already been deposited there. A Belter double bed, with a five-and-a-half-foot-tall headboard topped by a bold arch of carved and pierced cresting, stood to the right of the door, facing a fireplace of white-gray marble; the pillowcases were decorated with fancy crocheting, the crisp, snowy sheets scented with lavender. A wall-to-wall carpet of pink and yellow flowered diamonds on a deep green ground covered the floor; the wallpaper had a curved figure in gray on a rose ground, and the twin windows, overlooking the rear yard, were dressed in heavy yellow drapes. Slim was astonished to find, not the basin and pitcher he'd known all his life, but an elegant marble and mahogany washbasin with hot and cold running water tucked into a corner of the room—and even more so when Quentin took him out into the hall, to what he thought at first was the "hall bedroom" overlooking the street, but turned out to have been converted to a full indoor bathroom; along its fourteen-foot outer wall were ranged a round-seated, lidded toilet with a cistern tank-top high on the wall and a chain-pull for gravity flushing, then a tub with two slender pipes running up its back wall and taps—hot and cold—to fill it by, and last a separate shower stall, with a tank overhead supported on several thin pipes, and a curtain all around to contain splashes. Each was divided from the rest by a wall and pilaster, and united by a classic cornice above. What will they come up with next, Slim thought, feeling, for the first time in his life, very much like a hick. He looked at the shower with interest. Somethin' like that would be great to have at hayin' time, or after a day of branding, or when one of us has gotten mud from head to foot unstickin' some bogged cow-critter. I'll have to think about buildin' one, when I get home. In the side yard, maybe... run some pipe from the pump or the creek, put in a force pump to fill the tank... it would have to have a gravity feed, but I could make it sheet tin or copper, the sun would warm the water some... give it a plug so it could be drained in the fall...

The dining room was at the front of the half-basement, looking out onto the sunken areaway; its windows were barred with ornamental ironwork, and given both privacy and elegance by a large stained-glass "picture window" with a design of fruits and autumn leaves framing the features of a pre-Raphaelite damsel. It was smaller and lower-ceilinged than the parlor above it, about sixteen by twenty, with a fireplace, a butler's pantry linking it to the kitchen behind, and a right-angled one, about the same size, alongside for the silver and wine. Instead of the popular fruit and dead game, the wall art featured a set of four-color Strawberries and Basket, Cherries and Basket, Currants, and Raspberries, after Miss Virginia Granberry, and black-and-white engravings of the Roman Forum and pastoral scenes. Finely designed leather-backed chairs surrounded a polished mahogany table, dressed with real Irish linen tablecloth and napkins, on which was laid a regular feast of cold ham, cold sliced roast, cold veal, and cold chicken, baked beans, oysters variously prepared, potato hash, brown and white bread and hot golden toast with butter, honey, orange marmalade, plum and quince and strawberry jam, and blue grape jelly, an assortment of pickles and relishes, and for dessert gingerbread, lemon and raisin tarts, baked pears and apples, plum and apricot pies, and a marble cake of mingled pink, white, and chocolate. Two silver services, one for coffee and the other for hot chocolate, stood near the ends. But the dishes were transfer-printed "blue Staffordshire," decorated with American historical and geographical scenes, much like the "best china" that Slim's mother had brought to her marriage. Slim was introduced to Marcus, the twenty-year-old eldest son of the house, a pale and somewhat petulant-looking fellow who would be heading back to Princeton Monday morning—like the family's own visitors, he'd been off making the rounds of other houses on his New Year's calls—and his next youngest brother, Everett, who had a bright, eager look about him and clearly shared his father's interest in hearing something of the frontier. The girls had changed their clothes in honor of the guest: Lydia wore a taffeta gown of palest green with wide frilly cuffs, Eleanor pale-yellow spangled with a flower design; Marjorie Herrington was unobtrusive in gray silk with gray French lace at the throat. Everett and his younger brothers, it turned out, had been to a party at the house of friends, the week after Christmas being traditionally the season for such things. The three "little boys" weren't considered old enough to join the rest of the family for meals, except on Sundays and other special occasions—they ate in their own quarters up at the top of the house, and Miss Herrington's disappearance from the parlor had been in order to see that everything there was ready for their supper. She might have explained herself, thought Slim. I'd have understood about duty.

It was only now that he found himself becoming more comfortable with his hosts: their home and clothes might be far grander than his own family's, but away from the formal air of the parlor they began to show him something of their true selves, and he saw that they laughed often and took real pleasure in one another's company. In their private talk he found a far closer correspondence between the frankness of the privileged classes and the free-and-easy manners of the proletariat than between the upper levels and the middle class, with its fastidious reticences and almost pathological attachment to the concept of "respectability." Since his own inclination, as a stockman and a former farm boy, was to a certain discreet earthiness, he found it quite to his taste. John and Alice Bainsley especially did their best to draw him into the conversation, though Marcus impressed him as having a certain air of superiority that grated on his country-bred democratic attitudes. Westerners—which was how he had thought of himself for years—believed, in truth, that "all men were created equal," and that no one could acquire an assured social position by inheritance, but they also felt that every man was entitled to whatever place he could achieve by his individual worth. Any quality of leadership—brains, moral and physical courage, strength of character, native gentlemanliness, proficiency in riding, shooting, or any other useful skill—tended to raise its owner from the common level, and thus the aristocracy of the cow country consisted of the likeable elements among scouts, ranch foremen, top riders, crack shots, drivers on principal stage lines, forceful ranch owners, and, on the fringe, such robbers, outlaws, and gunfighters as, not being "badmen," plied their craft boldly and with conspicuous success and a tincture of chivalry. Of course wealth, being usually self-made in the new country, brought respect too, indicating as it did many sterling qualities, and there were always those youngsters, often sons of the biggest cattlemen—somewhat like Marcus, but with the added weight of the guns they wore—who traded on it, but these were accorded only a kind of second-level caution connected mainly to the fact that they might be ill-tempered and dangerous if crossed.

After the meal Everett went up to bed, Marcus excused himself to start packing for his journey back to college, and Slim, Quentin, the Bainsleys, and the three girls adjourned to "the library," or back parlor, a mirror image of the front one, but with the original twin windows replaced by a polygonal bay filled with plants. Here the furniture was a catch-all of incidentals and inheritances, but much cozier and more comfortable than in the other room—a medallion-back couch and a triple-back sofa, wing chairs and open-arm upholstered rockers, footstools covered with needlepoint pictures of lambs, rabbits, and baskets of kittens, a tall pigeonholed secretary with a globe on a stand alongside, a harp, a rosewood cottage piano with busts of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Bach ranged along its top on the embroidered velvet cover, a guitar leaning against one side of it, and a mandolin lying atop a decorated papier-mâché cabinet that probably held the sheet music. Here were the "upstairs cats"—two pretty calicoes and a Maltese—in a commodious wicker basket (the cook had one of her own, a tabby, who patrolled the kitchen, the pantries, and the undercellar); here, at least part of the time, were one or more of the Bainsley boys' dogs—a pointer, two setters, a Plott hound and a collie. Here too was the family's Christmas tree, decorated with small bouquets of paper flowers, gracefully draped strings of beads and holly berries, knots and tiny flags of bright ribbon, stars and shields of bright paper, and lace bags filled with colored candies. On the walls hung framed prints of Eastern cities and landscapes and ships traversing the high seas under full sail, a set of colored lithographs of the Four Seasons, Audobon bird prints, engravings of horses and horses' heads, half-models of ships on teakwood or Spanish-mahogany boards; on wall brackets and marble pedestals and on the mantelpiece and whatnot were a marble bust of Galatea and copies of the Discus Thrower and the Venus de Milo, a bronze Mercury and a bust of the Duke of Wellington, lovely bronze and ivory figures. On the mantel stood an old Dutch clock, still running like a top, its face a map of the heavens, with the signs of the Zodiac beside the numbers. Here were exhibited the souveniers brought home from foreign parts by Mr. Bainsley in his youth, not to impress callers, but to be enjoyed by the family and their close friends: decorated spoons from Florence, teacups picturing Victoria and Albert on their wedding day, quartz specimens from California, a conch shell with a picture of Vesuvius set in a little mirror in its bell, marble fragments of the Forum, a tiny folding fan from France, a little gilt slipper from Belgium with a velvet-covered pincushion in it, a seashell from an English beach, a pressed flower from Shelley's grave, a thin glass vial of sand from the Sahara, a tiny full-rigged ship in a bottle, a blown ostrich egg, ivory chessmen from Persia and China, curved little men from Japan, shells from Oceana, daggers from Damascus, old Roman coins, Indian brasswork; bisque figurines in fancy costumes, playing flutes, offering flowers, or carrying baskets on their heads; a bronze Buddha and one carved from jade, twin obelisks from Egypt on the mantel, Chinese bowls and an Indian ginger jar; a sofa throw of white Siberian fox skins; on the glassed-in shelves of the secretary, samples of scrimshaw, mottoes and pictures carved in whales' teeth, some of which took your breath away with their spidery views of ships and spouting whales and far-off places. By the door sat a whimsical weighted china doorstop of Delft blue, in the shape of a cat, with a little blue tongue licking its upper lip, and a very superior look. A lovely Wilton carpet, chiefly blue, covered the floor, and the curtains and hangings were of delicate amber. But what caught Slim's attention was the bookcases, reaching to within a couple of feet of the fourteen-foot ceiling, that began directly to the right of the door and ran almost sixteen feet to the back corner of the room. Portrait busts of Pope, Dickens, Thackeray, Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Plato, Socrates, Milton, Scott, Washington, Webster, and Byron were ranged along their tops, and their shelves were crammed with hundreds of books—more books than he'd ever seen in one place in his life, except in a few of the finer Southern homes he'd had occasion to enter. Oh, Ma would love this! he thought.

"I somehow have the impression that you're fond of books," said Bainsley in a faintly amused tone.

"I've always enjoyed reading," Slim admitted. "Music too, though I can't play anything. It was my mother's doing, mostly. She was principal of a young ladies' academy for nine years before she married—got the job when she was only seventeen. She saw to it that I got through the grades, and put plenty of good books in my way. Besides," and he smiled, "out in Wyoming, if a blizzard hits, you either learn to like to read or you start talkin' to the furniture. Even Pa likes the illustrated papers and goes back over them, rereadin' his favorite pieces—we brought a whole barrel of them out from Illinois with us when we went West."

"You must consider our books your own, for as long as you're here," the man told him. "What games do you play? Checkers, chess, backgammon, dominoes, morris? We often play in the evenings, before or after supper, or one of the girls will play the piano and we'll sing. I daresay that being a cavalryman, and a Westerner, you're familiar with horses; tomorrow Quentin will take you to the stable and you can arrange to rent one if you want to take a ride, and he can show you around the neighborhood at the same time, so you can get a feel for where things are. But right now, if you're not too tired, perhaps you'd tell us something about your home and your family. I don't doubt Quentin has already done you the same favor on our behalf."

"He has. And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd like very much to see the family shipyard he mentioned, sir. But I'm not tired at all; we spent last night in Jersey City and I got a good sleep."

So he settled himself in a brown velvet easy chair and spent the next couple of hours drawing word-pictures of his family's history, of his father's early career as a freighter, Indian trader, horse-hunter, and trail boss, of the farm he'd been born on and the neighborhood where he'd spent his boyhood, of the drives he'd gone on as a teenaged boy, the family's journey west, the valley where they'd settled, the land they claimed, the people they knew, the settlement where they bought what they needed, the vast distances, the soaring mountains, the rushing streams, the Indians. He told them about the old saw that success in the cattle business is determined fifty per cent by weather, fifty per cent by terrain, and fifty per cent by dumb luck, which includes the market; about the ten outlaws who'd stopped a stage out of Fort Laramie, the year before he enlisted, and robbed it of $3000, which Pa had said struck him as a pretty small return per man for their efforts, especially considering that two or three could do that kind of job just as well, if they picked their spot right; about his mother's reports, in her letters, of the Confederate officers said to have been assigned as rangers to attack Union installations and disrupt communications and military wagon trains. As there were virtually no Union soldiers between Denver and the Missouri, their success appeared certain, except as impromptu civilian posses or perhaps local militias could take a hand.

Mrs. Bainsley and the three girls kept their hands busy with fancywork as they listened, and Slim, who had learned on the range to keep cases on what was going on around him, observed that Marjorie Herrington's project seemed the most complex. She was apparently working from a pattern on the pillow, over which were pinned long threads weighted with hanging bobbins. She deftly twisted and slipped the bobbins over and around each other, moving the pins down as the knotted lace took shape. It looked like something his mother would enjoy, and he wondered if he could get to know the governess well enough to ask her to write the process out.

Quentin and his uncle clearly knew little of the West except what they had read in the newspapers, but they had thought about what they read and tried to fit it all together into a coherent pattern; the questions they asked were at first rather greenhornish, but neither man ever asked the same one twice, and their questions kept getting smarter and harder to answer. Bainsley, it developed, owned considerable stock in Western railroads and had been invested in both overland freighting and river steamers, though he'd taken a hit when the war closed the Mississippi to civilian shipping, and another when Russell, Majors & Waddell folded in '62. "If it were me," Slim said slowly, asked about where to put money, "I'd try for freighting again—the Platte isn't navigable, and everything goin' out to the Denver diggings or the Mormon country has to go overland. And stagecoaches: I know Congress is talkin' about a transcontinental railroad, but that will take years to finish, and even after it's done, it'll only serve one narrow corridor; everything more than a few miles north and south of it will still have to move by stage. Express: the Federal postal service just isn't adequate to move light or valuable freight—letters, newspapers, parcels and packages, and gold; companies like Wells Fargo have been boomin' for more than twenty years, makin' up for the shortfall. Mines, too. Colorado's havin' a lot of trouble with the Indians, but Montana looks like it's got a good start: most of what the camps there need goes out of St. Louis and up the Missouri to Fort Benton, which makes it a lot less vulnerable to war parties; from there it's only about eighty miles to Virginia City, through Flathead country, and they're peaceful. Or the other Virginia City, the one in Nevada: if you have any contacts in San Francisco you should be able to get in on that pretty easily, I hear the city's alive with Comstock speculation. You could do worse than buy cattle in Oregon and have 'em driven east over the mountains; all the minin' camps need beef, and there's a regular ranchin' industry takin' root in the western valleys of Montana. Now's the time to get a start: once this war ends, the West will boom like nothin' you ever saw—Pa thinks so too, or so Ma tells me in her letters." He told them about the road ranches that had been popping up all along the Oregon Trail for two decades, and of how, notwithstanding the general inhospitability of Great Basin terrain, in Nevada alone, by the time of the Comstock strikes in 1858-9, several thousand farmers, ranchers, and trading-station personnel had located along the emigrant trails. "Those people got in on the ground floor," he said, "and I'll be surprised if they and their children don't make some pretty fair fortunes in the next twenty years or so." He talked of his family's nearest neighbor, Reed McCaskey, former mountain man, freighter, and contractor to the Army, a man who saw a little further than most men, trusted his vision, and worked like a laborer until it came true; about how he'd been the first man to bring cattle into the Laramie Basin, how his daughters had worked the range alongside him—the oldest, twenty-one now, had been doing it a full dozen years—while he built his herd, and how already, just from Army beef contracts and drives to the gold camps at South Pass City and around Denver, he was realizing a sizeable profit from his labors. "Pa was never into mining," he said, "but he always said that supplyin' miners with things they need is a surer way to gettin' rich than all the mineral claims ever staked. Out in California, even before the diggings started to decline around '53 or '54, the wisest '49ers had become merchants, bankers, ranchers, or farmers, and many of 'em got a lot greater wealth out of it than those who kept on searchin'. The same in our part of the country: a lot of Colorado and southern-Wyoming ranchers came in as '59ers, became traders to the miners, realized the demand for beef, and began to run herds, mostly sourced in poor, lame, and footsore cattle they bought from westering emigrants, with some good Eastern stock brought out to grade up the breed. I've seen more than one ranchhouse that looks not much better than a log-built cabin from outside, but inside is as comfortable and well-furnished as—well, as this house."

When the mantel clock chimed in a lull in the talk, they were all astonished to find that it was quarter past eleven. "Good Lord," said Bainsley, "we never stay up this late unless we're at a party. Luckily I decided to give my shipyard people tomorrow off; there didn't seem much point in making them come in for just one day between New Year's and Sunday."

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to disturb your routine," Slim apologized.

"Don't be. We asked you for information and you provided it. Let me think about everything you've said and I'm sure I'll have more questions. Take him up to bed, Quentin. Good night, Slim. Sleep well, and we'll see you at breakfast."

**SR**

City people, Slim discovered, lay much longer abed than ranchers: seven-thirty was the usual rising hour in winter, at least in comfortable families, and even in summer it was only half an hour earlier than that. It was, he had to grant, both convenient and pleasant to have a fireplace in your bedroom, for which the maid left a metal bucket of hot coals outside the door so you could freshen the fire and quickly warm the room up, and running water in the corner, including hot for shaving and washing up. At eight the entire family, including the three "little boys"—Charles wearing a Zouave cap, jacket, and knickers with a bow tie, ribbed hose, and button boots, Hiram a sailor suit, and John Jr. a Highland costume with kilt and Scotch bonnet—assembled in the dining room for morning prayers; then the three youngest went to eat their breakfast in the kitchen, under the eye of Martha Curran, the cook, and the rest sat down to a substantial meal of home-canned pears and spiced canteloupe, cornmeal mush with honey, veal chops, creamed chicken, country sausage and hashed potatoes, poached eggs, hot biscuits with rhubarb marmalade, blackberry jam, and guava jelly, wheatcakes and honey, and abundant coffee, tea, and milk.

Last night's snow hadn't stuck, being too dry, and though the morning was cold and the breeze off the bay brisk, the sun had come out and the day looked inclined to be fine. Few Manhattan or Brooklyn houses had service alleys in back, as was customary in smaller towns, so for the sake of the health and comfort of the block's residents, family horses and carriages were kept in a private carriage house or stable in a less fashionable street nearby. The Bainsleys boarded theirs on Hunts Lane, just two blocks down Henry Street, in the biggest stable Slim had ever seen—a four-storey building of brick construction, with wide sweeping ramps that permitted teams to go directly to the top—and here he chose a golden bay hack with three white legs and an irregular stripe on its face, arranging to have the animal held for him till ten every morning; "If I'm not here by then," he told the stable owner, "odds are I'm not coming." The owner, learning that he was a guest of the Bainsleys, was anxious to please and agreed readily. He also had several McClellan saddles in his tack room, for the use of former military men who'd gotten used to the higher cantle and pommel, and promised to put one aside for Slim's personal use.

Quentin rented a white-stockinged buckskin, settled with apparent ease on a Kentucky saddle, and took his friend on a tour along Joralemon Street, down Bond to Livingston, along that to Clinton, back by Schermerhorn, down Third Avenue and across State Street to Atlantic Avenue, the major shopping artery—a dozen blocks running almost dead straight from the ferry-landing east to Fort Greene Place—which served as the dividing line between the Heights and South Brooklyn, far from the poolrooms and dance halls of Red Hook; its northern counterpart was Fulton Street. At Montague and Clinton Streets he pointed out the Church of the Holy Trinity, a Gothic affair that had been built in 1847; later, doubling back by a different route further inland, the Italianate Brooklyn Savings Bank, which had risen in the same year at Fulton and Concord Streets. This circuit gave Slim a very good idea of what the neighborhood was like. The typical "brownstone block" was 200x350 feet—slightly more than an acre and a half—with eight 25x100 lots on each end, and another six on either side in between, making twenty-eight altogether. Most were occupied by the classically austere Federal and Greek-Revival façades of houses built for lawyers, stockbrokers, and shipping magnates who'd made their fortunes in lower Manhattan, with the latter being substantially in the majority; they continued the architectural simplicity of the earlier Federal style, yet forecast the Romantic era by their nostalgic associations with Ancient Greece, while some, like the Bainsleys', had been later partly or wholly remodelled in Gothic Revival mode, with the parlor floor being the primary example. They had warm red-brick façades, set off by brownstone or white-marble trim, and higher ceilings than Federal ones, and either a full (though sometimes only small-windowed) third storey or a pitch-roofed fourth with dormers. Large ones often featured a handsome doorway porch, consisting of free-standing, generally fluted round Doric (the preferred) columns or square vernacular simplifications, about evenly divided between the two and accounting for probably eighty per cent of the total, or Ionic columns supporting a heavy horizontal entablature; only about five per cent had the florid Corinthian ones. The doorway itself was framed in local brownstone or a light-colored limestone, granite, or marble, the door (which consisted of one or two vertical or three horizontal panels, usually edged with an egg-and-dart molding) by a simple transom and sidelights, plain panes of glass separated by wood muntin bars. The anthemion, or stylized honeysuckle-leaf design, was found in both ironwork and interior decoration, and assorted variations of the Greek key, or fret, were almost as popular; the "meander" (an endless fret design), the "guilloche" (a border of two or more bands interlaced in a repeating pattern), the lyre, upright obelisk, and sharp-pointed geometric cones, and floral forms in double relief, usually a rosette with a slender, several-inch foliate form extending above and below, were other common designs. Under the cornice there were usually motules—slender vertical ribs grouped in three's, with a crosswise band just above their tips—and small dentils, but an egg-and-dart design was also used, and the most elaborate treatments combined a row of this with modillion blocks and taenia molding. Windows were generally double-hung sashes with six square panes above and as many below; sometimes a narrow three-over-three was added on either side, and occasionally a house might be seen with a pair of six-over-nines, flanked by two-over-three sidelights. Elaborate carved cresting was found topping some door and window frames, but more generally the latter had only decorative crowns, mostly fairly simple and angular, some low-peaked, some oblong, and some centered by raised ornament, and even more occasionally with a decorative motif in the middle. Lacy machine-made ironwork, which had become available in the '30's, had quickly come into fashion for stoop rails, arches framing top steps, and the ten-to-twelve-foot-tall balconies (usually called "verandahs") which had begun to appear outside floor-length front-parlor windows in the '40's, some with shallow roofs projecting above them, and some extensions of the topmost level of the stoop; these offered a pleasing contrast with the plain housefront, and frequently they incorporated such Gothic Revival motifs as the pointed arch, trefoil, quatrefoil, and finial, which gave a hybrid appearance to the basically Greek homes to which they were added. Often these houses were built in blocks of four to eight, designed to look like a single building, and occasionally they even had elaborate cast-iron porches running the length of the block on all the above-grade storeys. They had, Quentin said, the same basic floor plan that had evolved during the '20's, more or less like the Bainsleys': front dining room in the half-basement, kitchen behind, with eight- or nine-foot ceilings; double parlors above, with eleven- or twelve-foot ones (fourteen in the biggest); and (usually) a couple of floors of bedrooms over that. "So that when you go visiting," he added with a smile, "you feel right at home; you know pretty much where everything is." The stairs, in the later versions, had moved to the center of the hall, and were lit by a skylight several floors above; this arrangement left room for a butler's pantry or a service stair at the back.

In the '40's the Anglo-Italianate or "English-basement" style had appeared, with a stoop usually two- or three-step, sometimes up to five-, rather than the immense ten- or twelve-step kind common to the earlier structures, and a central stair that made good use of the poorly lit and ventilated center of the house; these typically had a rusticated first storey, the tallest windows on the second (those on the first were only slightly taller than those of the third and fourth), and square two-paned ones on the fifth if there was one. They were usually only sixteen to eighteen feet wide, and therefore rarely built in Brooklyn, where full-sized lots were much cheaper than in Manhattan, but a few could still be seen, often put up as speculations and rented out. From late in that decade the Greek rowhouses had been joined by the pure Italianate style, all with unusually grand main entrances and all epitomizing Romantic ideals and the prosperous city in shadowy brownstone façades and lush naturalistic ornament carved in stone around doors and windows, and even some Gothic Revival ones, with two and three full storeys, angular front bay windows, and attic gables facing the street. In the '50's, boldly-ornamented Italianate brownstones, twenty-two to twenty-five feet wide and four-storeys-and-a-basement tall, introduced the splendor and monumental scale of the Brownstone Era to the Heights' streets of modestly scaled Federal and Greek Revival houses. Now, with the emergence of a rage for the Paris of Louis Napoleon's Second Empire, "French," or mansard, roofs could be picked out throughout the Heights, capping off Flemish-bond brick fronts, dentiled cornices, and Greek Revival doorways; and polygonal bay windows were being added to some back parlors, like the Bainsleys'. It was about 1860, too, that "the fashion of French furniture" had come in "with a rush," as Nathaniel Parker Willis had noted, and the "nabobs" began refurnishing "from skylight to basement" in this new style; even the Bainsleys, who felt none of the social insecurity that often characterized the newly-risen middle class, had, as Slim had seen, at least redone their formal parlor in it.

The haughty homes along Manhattan's Fifth Avenue might dazzle with elaborately carved stone ornament, plate-glass windows, and black-walnut front doors with silver hardware, while interior doorknobs on the parlor floor might be white porcelain with painted flowers, glass with silver granules blown in, silverplate over brass, or even extravagant solid silver; but white porcelain throughout was the rule in the more modest homes. Mid-century ones, instead of the little "hall bedroom" at the front of the second floor, usually had a full-width front bedroom with an arched niche of the same width—about six feet nine—for the bed, which was set parallel with the window; above it was a sewing room, and at the back a couple of bathrooms.

The streets swarmed with traffic, both public and private. The omnibuses, or "buses," as they were sometimes called for short, were tiny, arch-roofed, high-wheeled, rather flimsily-built affairs, drawn by two or three horses apiece; they were painted in bright colors, each with its name—Metropolitan, Geo. Washington, or whatever else had seemed impressive to the line owners—in gold letters along the side. The driver sat on the front end of the roof; the passengers, about twelve to eighteen of them, entered by the rear, deposited their ten-cent fare, and sat on unpadded bench seats running down the two long sides, facing each other, for a jarring ride over brick or cobblestone paving. The streetcars were larger, resembling elongated stagecoaches with three doors along the side, divided from each other by single or double windows, and two pair of wheels set close under the center, and could accommodate thirty to sixty-three people at a time; their teams, chiefly Morgans, were laden with sleighbells that jangled musically at every step. The improved rail that had come into use about half a dozen years before allowed a fairly flush surface and reduced friction, accounting for their greater capacity (which, in turn, allowed them to charge a lower fare, five to seven cents) and speed (twice the omnibuses') and for the fact that they could get by with just one horse (though many had two), but because of their tracks they had no leeway in dodging obstacles, as other vehicles did. Quentin explained that, to keep the interruption of service to a minimum, the car companies all had emergency wagons that went out at every fire call, carrying long iron frames that furnished car tracks right across the hoses—or sometimes towers several feet high built on the wagon bed, from which, one on either side of the track, the hose lines could be suspended. Weaving in and out among them on the noisy street surfaces were riders, desperately dashing pedestrians, businesses' delivery wagons drawn usually by a single light horse in shafts, coal and ice wagons, great lumbering beer wagons behind showy teams of massive purebred Percherons, laundresses' and vendors' carts, private carriages, and, for the wealthy, hackney, or hired, ones in a variety of sizes, from broughams to the commonest two-wheeled cabriolets (like Declan MacAlister's) with a folding top and an apron covering the passengers from foot to waist. The fares for these tended to be high, starting at a dollar and rising according to the number of passengers and the length of the ride, and since other types of city transportation ran to a dime or less, they were a luxury that only the rich could afford. Even well-to-do ladies generally took the omnibuses, especially if they planned to visit several stores or homes in a given trip, since that meant a lot of getting off and on, not to mention making the cabbie wait.

Shoppers were out in force despite the cold weather, chiefly women; their children pointed and shouted admiringly as the two cavalrymen passed them. Red-brick and limestone sidewalks, studded with gaslights and fire hydrants and fronted with carriage blocks, individual stone hitching posts with snap chains, and foundry-made racks with cast-iron posts and chains that snapped through rings, ran before lines of three-, four-, and five-storey brick buildings, some with large plate-glass windows at grade—groceries, bakeries, banks, stationers, boot-and-shoe shops, china-and-glassware shops, hardware stores, jewellers', tobacconists', milliners' and men's hatters, music stores, tailors, meat markets, furniture dealers, barbershops, apothecaries, shoe-repair shops, saloons and lunchrooms, a confectioner's, a "curiosity shop," a gunsmith, a fur store, a stove-and-tinware shop, a variety store, a toyshop, a bookstore with a rental library, a florist's greenhouse, a "Repository of Art," a hairdresser advertising Chignons, Water Curls, Fringes, Frisettes, Switches, and Curls and declaring Highest Prices Paid for Raw Hair, a "fancy store" selling jewelry, pictures, laces, bric-a-brac, fine lines of buttons, and what its sign called "articles of virtu," a China Hall with a display of spoonholders, pin trays, tumblers, tureens, and the like. On the side streets were smithies, feed stores, small stables, undertakers' parlors, coal-and-ice merchants, coachbuilders, carpenters, bathhouses, saddle-and-harness shops, laundries, taxidermists, plumbers, tinshops, pawnshops, more saloons. At least every other block there was some type of oyster parlor, cellar, saloon, bar, house, stall, or lunchroom, for the country had been oyster-crazy for over seventy years; some of these advertised ice cream in season as well. There were also street vendors, though not as many, Quentin said, as you could find in warmer weather: fishmongers with their braying tin horns, knife- and horseradish-grinders, rag-and-bottle men, tinkers, charcoal men, yeast sellers, oystermen, newsboys (and some girls too), boot-cleaners, shoelace men, umbrella dealers, spectacle women, brick-dust sellers, and above all stands and small wagons and carts belonging to the street-food sellers, each of whom, for the convenience of regular customers, had a favored location where he (or she) could always be found: gingerbread ladies, sweet-potato men, pastrymen, sellers of pretzels, hominy, chestnuts, pies (both meat and fruit), and soup, which was carried in covered metal buckets and ladled out as required into tin mugs; popcorn wagons with their tiny flames to heat the butter. Flush signs mounted between upper windows advertised the presence of lawyers, doctors, dentists, real-estate offices, insurance agencies, loan brokerages, surveyors, photographic studios, contractors, civil engineers, picture-framers, sign-painters and "ornamental" painters, dancing schools, billiard parlors, day-nurseries for youngsters aged four to six, lecture halls, auditoriums, and the meeting-rooms of a wide variety of fraternal orders. Some of the uppermost floors were apparently given over to rooms or apartments: Slim noticed potted plants and a cat or two on their sills.

City-dwelling Americans particularly, not being employed in the kind of dawn-to-dusk physical work that kept country folks lean and trim, had become gymnasium fans early in the century, a process that had gotten a boost from the German Turnvereine, and as keeping the body fit and muscles in tone came to be considered necessary for good health, large, lofty-ceilinged, well-equipped gyms, lit by broad bands of ceiling-high windows, had become abundant in New York and Brooklyn alike. Quentin pointed out one third-storey facility on Atlantic Avenue to which he and Marcus had both gone, and described its clients fencing, vaulting the horse, swinging from trapezes, climbing poles and ropes, essaying slanted ladders, and working out on the Roman rings, hung in pairs from the ceiling, which had recently come into use. The place even had a boxing instructor, a well-known English pugilist who taught it as a gymnastic art and manly science, not to be confused with the brutal sport of prizefighting. By the '50's, even the women were boasting of athletic clubs of their own, where they were beginning to swing Indian clubs, try Turkish baths, and do calisthenics; the Avenue had one of these too, with its own gym, bowling alleys, swimming pool, and facilities for indoor tennis and badminton, whist, fencing, and chess, as well as trapezes and punching bags. Slim wasn't exactly scandalized—after all, he had the McCaskey girls as an example—but he was surprised; he'd thought that city ladies spent most of their time shopping, dressing, calling, and gossipping. Quentin laughed at his dubious expression. "Maybe the middling sort are like that," he admitted. "A lot of them are pretty new to the whole concept; they're afraid of slipping back down, so they're fanatical about self-improvement, and constantly trying to separate themselves from the working class and emulate their betters. The problem is that they don't really know how their betters live, never having had much to do with that level of society, so they have to create a style for themselves that they think is like it. You heard Declan yesterday. People at Uncle John's and Aunt Alice's level—old families, or at least those who didn't have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—don't feel that need to compete or impress; they're diversified enough to be secure—and they know where they stand socially."

Slim pondered that as the horses jogged clattering over the cobbles. "I can see that, I guess," he agreed.

Quentin slanted a look at him. "But?"

"But what?"

His friend laughed again. "Oh, come on. There's always a 'but.' You don't have to feel shy about speaking up, Slim; there's nobody to hear but me, and we're Army."

"I like your uncle and aunt," Slim answered slowly. "I want you to believe that, because it's the truth. They seem just as friendly and welcoming and—and democratic as my own folks, which I guess is the result of feelin' secure, like you said. But there's just... somethin'... about Marcus—"

Quentin sobered immediately. "I know what you mean. I've grown up with him and I've watched it develop. Boys at our level usually have a tutor, you know, till we go off to college, or maybe an academy. Marcus was always the better of us at Latin and Greek. Cicero, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Livy, Herodotus, Thucydides—he'd read them all by the time he was fourteen. He gained an understanding of the history and politics of the ancient world from their writings—and he also began to absorb their elitist and authoritarian values. He's what Mr. Thackeray called a 'snob,' I think. And, of course, he also likes all the pleasures and luxuries that Uncle John's money makes possible. He's not a bully in the classic sense—I've never known him to pick on anyone smaller, not even his brothers; and he has his fair share of courage—he's a better horseman than I am, and I've seen him take a horse over jumps a lot of grown men, with twenty years' more experience, would hesitate to try. But he is arrogant."

"Arrogant. That's the word I had in mind, I guess," Slim agreed. "We have that kind out West too, mostly second generation, like him—I was thinkin' about that at supper yesterday. When you haven't had to work your heart out for what you've got, even if you've been expected to do your fair share, or to prepare yourself for some kind of career like you and Marcus... it's an easy trap to fall into, probably."

"Uncle John hopes he'll take over the shipyard, of course," Quentin observed. "He's been working summers in the office ever since he was fifteen. The other boys will get modest inheritances, enough, with a profession and maybe a little competence from a wife, to live on decently, but what they'll do hasn't been decided on yet; I think that was part of why Uncle John was quizzing you about Western investments last night."

"And you?" Slim ventured. "What will you do, if this war ever ends? Bein' just a nephew, I don't guess you can hope for a piece of any of the family businesses."

"No, though I've got some money of my own, from my grandfather—my mother's father—and what I saved out of my allowance in college," Quentin agreed. "I don't know; I haven't given it a lot of thought. I was less than a year out of college when the fighting broke out, and I'd seen for a while that it was bound to, so I'd been giving most of my time to a local militia unit, trying to gain the kind of skills I thought I'd need when the time came. I could read law, I suppose, or go to engineering school, or get into some bank or brokerage in Manhattan—or transfer to the Regulars. But since I've known you, I'm thinking more and more about going West."

"I think you could do well there," Slim told him. "If you want to go with me when the time comes, you'll be welcome. Maybe Cole Rogers or Mr. McCaskey would have a place for a man who can ride and shoot, even if he doesn't know much about cattle. Maybe Pa would."

"I don't suppose," said Quentin, "that a place like that would suit a married man."

"No, cowhands are mostly single. If they get married, it's because they've saved up enough to start a little place of their own, or maybe made foreman." Slim eyed his friend curiously. "You've never said you were married."

"I'm not, or engaged either. Let's just say I... have my eye on someone, and let it go at that."

Sensing that Quentin didn't want to discuss the subject further, Slim went along with the request. They paused at an oyster house for a bite to eat, finished off with hot mince pies from one of the vendors, and continued their tour.

**SR**

Marjorie Herrington stood at the day-nursery window, fifty-three and a half feet above the sidewalk, and watched as Quentin Colville and Slim Sherman, in their distinctive blue uniforms and Army overcoats, walked up Montague Street toward Henry. She had heard it said that there was "something about a man in uniform," and despite a near lifetime of training herself to strict practicality, there was a part of her that couldn't help agreeing with the maxim—especially when the man was above average height and the uniform was dark blue: it seemed to accentuate both leanness and tallness. And cavalrymen had a certain grace even when not in the saddle...

She shook her head sharply and turned away from the glass. There was no point in yearning over something you could never have; all it brought was frustration and grief. "Boys," she said, "get your coats and we'll go for our walk."

Ten minutes later, three little boys in identical pale gray overcoats, and a young woman in gray worsted with a hooded burnouse and a black bonnet trimmed with velvet pansies, might have been seen turning the corner at Henry Street and moving "nor'nor'east," as Mr. Bainsley's late father would have said, behind the protection of the rowhouses that cut off the wind from the Bay. The "nursery culture" was, at least in the North, a comparitively new thing, having been imported to the United States about 1850 from England, where many children of the upper middle class and the elite were raised chiefly by nurses and governesses. Parents there probably loved their children, but they believed in a little distance between the generations. Children and their caregivers were often given their own separate wing in country houses, and in town were likely to be up at the very top, with "nursery bars" at the windows. Their parents hardly ever saw them; they never played with them, or gave them parties, or took them along in the carriage. In return the youngsters often formed special bonds of affection with their nurses particularly. The "nanny" read them stories, looked after them when they were ill, comforted them when they were unhappy; they told her secrets they would never have dreamed of sharing with their parents. A typical day began around eight A.M. with prayers before breakfast, for which the children trooped down to the family dining room and joined their parents and the rest of the household servants. Father led the group in prayer, and this was the last time the children saw him. They were immediately hustled back up to the nursery, where their breakfast was served—a large meal, like that of the grown-ups—and then (at least in town) they were dressed and taken out for a walk in the nearby park, where they were allowed to play with neighbor children while the nurse passed her time with others of her ilk. This interval was followed by lessons with the governess until lunchtime, the principal meal of their day, then a rest period and an hour or two of indoor play, or perhaps another walk. Next came afternoon tea, and at five they changed into fresh clothes for an hour's visit with Mother in the drawing room. Then came bathtime, and by around six-thirty they had said their prayers and were in bed. Boys were often sent away to school as early as eight; girls stayed home and learned to sew and embroider and play the piano, and when they were fourteen or fifteen a dancing master would come to the house; still later they would go to chaperoned parties.

In America there had been modifications made to the system, which was still used chiefly by the wealthiest families; it wouldn't become an indispensable feature of the middle-class city home before 1875, but already, in well-to-do ones, it was customary to keep at least the very young children—under ten or so—in the attic, as out-of-sight as possible, in a large, well-lighted nursery with plenty of windows (barred) and a heater stove; here they lived in charge of a nurse or governess except when, scrubbed and in their best, they were allowed downstairs for brief glimpses of the grown-up world—on condition that they say not a word. On the other hand, at least in some families, they not infrequently ate in the kitchen—breakfast at minimum—so their governess could have hers with the grown-ups in the dining room. They had their noon dinner upstairs (which made a top-to-bottom dumbwaiter, like the Bainsleys', particularly useful), and their "tea" (a cold meal) or "supper" (a hot one) too, usually no later than five-thirty. John Jr. went to bed at seven, Hiram and Charles at eight, and none of them ever went out, except to the fully enclosed back yard, without Marjorie, whom they called by her first name, as she did them (the other members of the staff said "Mister"). As in England, the position of governess was one of the few "respectable" career options available to single women of the middle class or to women of the upper class whose families' fortunes had fallen, such as widowed gentlewomen; but the pay was considerably better (Marjorie got forty dollars a month, twice the British minimum, besides her room and meals, which compared quite favorably to Everett's tutor, who earned thirty-three—although he had two other boys he taught at other homes, and got paid by their parents too). She was treated more like a family member than an employee (which she was) or a servant (which, technically, she wasn't), and being so close in age to the daughters of the house, she often served as their confidante and fashion advisor. Unlike the five Irish housemaids, who doubled up in little bedrooms under the slope of the attic roof, she had one of her own, the narrow little "hall bedroom" opening off the night-nursery at the back of the fourth floor and furnished with things she had brought from her childhood home—a cherrywood field bed that dated back to 1785 and had belonged to her great-aunt, a spool-turned bureau with a tilting rectangular mirror set endwise to it, a Boston rocker, a big cherry clothes chest in which (since she had no closet space and no room for a bulky wardrobe) she could keep her dresses and other outer garments folded flat and put away with dried lavender. She had a hand-quilted comforter, a goose-down pillow trimmed with lace, a ruffled bed-canopy, a hanging three-shelf whatnot on which she displayed her few small treasures, a number of favorite pictures—cheerful prints of sunsets and Greek nymphs, oval-framed flower prints, a charcoal drawing of her family made just before her father's death—besides a quartet of carved wood plaques depicting the four seasons, others of women in peasant dress, a beautiful sampler in tiny cross-stitch that she'd done as a little girl, an oblong tapestry of six kittens peering over a wall; prints of Roussy-Trioson's Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes, Théodore Géricault's The Charging Chasseur, and Fleury-François Richard's Valentine of Milan Weeping for the Death of Her Husband. What was perhaps most important, her family and the Bainsleys had been friends for many years, and Mr. and Mrs. Bainsley looked on her as almost another daughter, someone they cared genuinely about and treated kindly and with as much respect as they did their own.

The cottage piano in the library was hers, though the busts on it weren't, as were the guitar and mandolin, and much of the sheet music for all three she had bought with her own money; she was particularly fond of the Romantic composers—Verdi, Meyerbeer, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann; Mendelssohn, whose Songs Without Words for the piano left the imagination to supply the text; Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Wagner's "Forest Murmurs," and dozens of piano pieces and songs that sounded the proper bucolic note; the exoticism of Gluck's The Unforeseen Meeting and The Pilgrims to Mecca, Auber's La Circassienne, Gounod's The Queen of Sheba (composed as recently as 1862), Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio; Italian symphonies, Hungarian rhapsodies, Polish mazurkas, and the subtler nationalism of Hector Berlioz, who wrote overtures not only to operas but to novels such as Scott's Waverley and Rob Roy, besides his Fantastic Symphony and Harold in Italy, which became operas without words, and the later "dramatic symphony" of Romeo and Juliet and "dramatic legend" Damnation of Faust—in effect, concert operas in which the costumes and scenery were left to the listener's imagination. Her bookcase, a plain walnut one with glass doors that locked, was filled with the kinds of books most closely associated with the Romantic movement: autobiography, confessions, memoirs, folk tales and ballads, collections and variations of Spanish epics, Scottish ballads, German fairy tales; Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Goethe's Faust and Werther, Heinrich Heine, Chateaubriand, deMusset, George Sand, the historian Guizot, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo, who could write with mastery in any style; Dante, an interest in whom was one of the main facets of the Romantic style; Oriental mysticism as interpreted by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea, based on the philosophy of the negation of the will, and the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling; the brothers Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Adelbert von Chamisso, Heinrich von Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Joseph von Eichendorff, Ludwig Uhland, Novalis; Prosper Merimée, Alessandro Manzoni, Adam Oehlenschalger, Henrik Wergeland, Per Daniel Atterbom, E. J. Stagnelius, Esaias Tegner, Erik Gustaf Geijer, Carl Jonas Almqvist, the Scandinvian folktales of Asbjornson and Moe, Elias Lonrott's Kalevala, the novels of Madame de Stael, Giacomo Leopardi; the poetry of Lermontov, and Alexander Pushkin's The Prisoner of the Caucasus, The Robber Brothers, Eugene Onegin, and the epic fairy tale Ruslan and Ludmila; Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim's collection of versified folk tales Des Knaben Wunderhorn; the Grimms' Fairy Tales and Jacob's long academic work on Germanic mythology; Freiherr von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild and Hoffmann's Der Sandmann; Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen; the plays of Schiller; Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, the tales and poems of Poe, Irving, Cooper, and Hawthorne; the Scottish and Irish poets and balladeers, Robert Burns, James Beattie, Thomas Moore, Thomas Parnell, Allan Ramsay, James Thomson, Robert Blair, William Hamilton, David Mallet, James Hogg, and James Macpherson's "Ossian;" the early English forerunners of the movement, John Dyer, William Shenstone, Mark Akenside, William Collins, Thomas Gray, Edward Young, Chatterton, Cowper, Crabbe, William Lisle Bowles, Thomas and Joseph Warton, Percy's Reliques and original ballads; William Godwin's novels and Life of Chaucer, Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance; Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, the poetry of Alphonse deLamartine and Alfred deVigny, and the flamboyant Théophile Gautier; Allan Cunningham, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, Thomas Love Peacock, William Hazlitt, Thomas DeQuincey, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Thomas Hood, John Keble, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Robert Stephen Hawker, Christopher North, Barry Cornwall, the lyrics of Mrs. Hemans, the plays of Joanna Baillie; and the English Romantic poets—Blake, whose Songs of Innocence, if only it had been properly published and publicized, she believed might have made a deep impression upon England, for it was a book of startling simplicity that Rousseau would have loved, full of reverence and a keen delight in nature and a spontaneous quality at the very opposite end of the world from the carefully balanced couplets of Pope; Wordsworth, with his feeling of mingled companionship, joy, reverence, and love for the earth; Southey's epic poem Thalaba the Destroyer, with chapters such as "The Desert Circle" and "Life in an Arab Tent;" Samuel Rogers, Ebenezer Elliott, Thomas Campbell, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron—The Corsair, Lara, The Giaour, Manfred, Beppo, Don Juan—so new and vivid a kind of poetry in their day, written in the Spenserian stanza, with its flavor of romance and chivalry, and picturing, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (her favorite),dangerous cities, bullfights, Turkish chieftains and Spanish ladies. There was no story in it, merely a series of descriptions of the places Harold saw and his thoughts and feelings on seeing them; but in 1812, when there was no telegraph and no trans-Atlantic cable, this was exciting. She had, too, a certain guilty fondness for the German ghost and brigand literature and the English gothic school of Horace Walpole, Matthew G. Lewis, and Mrs. Ann Radcliffe which flourished around the same time, full of rambling and ruinous old castles, dark, desperate, and cadaverous villains, secret passages, vaults, trapdoors, evidences of deeds of monstrous crime, sights and sounds of mysterious horror, and vivid descriptions of landscapes and long travel scenes; these had culminated in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre. Closely related to them was the Oriental tale, typified by William Beckford's Vathek, which was there too, along with its more recent imitator, James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan, and The Arabian Nights, and many books of travel.

Her father had been born in Pennsylvania of a respected conservative family ruled mainly by several aunts; his father had died when he was two and a half. His sister was two years older, and his brother a newborn. They were brought up by their mother, with the help of their grandmother and aunts, and every one of them was musical. Grandmother was not only a church organist and pianist, but also a lover of literature who knew Greek and Latin. She took pride in having been a Tarlton, one of a family "who did things!" Most were farmers or merchants or bankers—one, Grandmother's father, was a judge—but they believed in things and acted in accordance with their beliefs. They weren't afraid of what people sometimes called them—"stubborn" and "obstinate" being among the mildest. They were workers and men of character and conscience. Father absorbed much of this from his boyhood: though he was an intellectual type who liked to read Cicero or Milton or Plutarch in the evenings and go to bed early, he had very strong opinions and wasn't afraid to express them—or act on them either. The grim precepts of Presbyterian Calvinism seemed to him more consistent with cruel fanaticism than with the gentle teachings of the Moravians or the peaceful democratic creed of Quakerism which he saw around him in southern Delaware County, and like Ethan Allen, he developed a deep hatred of its determinism. Freedom of the will was at the core of his belief, and love of liberty was the motivating force of his life: he shared the eighteenth-century passion for simple living in rural surroundings, hated tyranny, cruelty, and oppression, and was a fervid champion of liberty in all its forms; as a youth he saw, or thought he saw, half humanity writhing in the fetters of oppressive government, or in the crueller chains of false beliefs. He read Hegel and Montesqueiu, Swift, Defoe, the revolutionary writers, the golden-agers, the back-to-naturists, the fanatics of equality, the champions of government by the consent of the governed, whose ideals helped to gain religious toleration and civil liberties—Godwin's Political Justice, in which it was claimed that all the world would be very different if its armies and priests and lawyers and policemen could be abolished, and Reason and Love made the kings of the earth; Hume, Tom Paine, and what he called "the Great Trinity"—John Locke, advocate of the natural rights of man; Rousseau, believer in the sovereignty of the people; Voltaire, satirical critic of the Church and its oppression, who battled against political oppression, superstition, and religious intolerance. Besides these his favorites included German philosophy and romance; Lucretius, the favorite philosopher of the materialists and atheists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and Virgil's Georgics, which preached a peace-giving return to Nature, and were therefore beloved of Rousseau and his followers. He believed that when men finally got true Liberty, the dark houses and too much toil and want of bread would disappear. He admired Washington, Kosciusko, and such personalities as the Irish republican Hamilton Rowan and the South American adventurer General Francisco Miranda, who fought vainly against the royalists in Venezuela and finally died in a Spanish prison, and later Kossuth, Mazzini, and Garibaldi.

Born in 1805, he entered college at thirteen, and spent much of his time there talking with other idealistic youths of Liberty and Tolerance and Morality and Love, how they intended to enlighten the world on them, how marvellous they were and how there was something old-fashioned and smothering, if not downright wicked, about churches and government and marriage; he was so devoted to the cause of liberty that he wore the little red cap of the French Revolutionists to the meetings of his literary society. At eighteen, a despiser of kings and nobles and an admirer of the French Revolution, a flaming advocate of the American type of democratic government, and a hater of war and oppression, he went to Ireland to work for Catholic emancipation, but it wasn't till the following year that he found the real cause of his heart. Soon after New Year's, 1824, Daniel Webster delivered his celebrated oration on Greek independence, and American sympathy was fired. Committees to aid the cause were organized in many cities throughout the land. Money, provisions, and medical supplies were sent to the Greek patriots. In Europe a stream of volunteers flowed toward the Aegean. America, too, sent its people, including Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who arrived in Greece in 1825 and was appointed surgeon-in-chief to the rebel forces, in which capacity his services proved invaluable. Marjorie's father went too, and was in Neméa when the Turks and Egyptians retook Athens on June 5, 1827, and began to ravage the Peloponnesus. The revolution seemed about over. But by that time western sympathy for the Greeks was simply overpowering. Great Britain, France, and Russia formed an alliance and demanded that Turkey cease hostilities. When it didn't, their combined fleet engaged the Turko-Egyptian one at Navarino on October 20, and simply wiped it out. Although the war wasn't over, Turkey found itself facing the inevitable, and in 1829 reluctantly accepted a peace that allowed Greek self-rule. For a while this was supposed to be under a vague Turkish overlordship, but by 1832 Greece's outright independence was recognized, something Father always took great pride in having helped to make possible. Meanwhile he, having been wounded, went to England, where he became acquainted with the young John Stuart Mill, the economist and philosopher, and with Jeremy Bentham and his Utilitarian followers. From there he returned to his native land and married, and had five children, of whom four survived—Brian, born in 1830; Rosamond, eight years younger; Hugh, who came three years later; and Marjorie, the youngest, who arrived in 1843.

After his European venture, Father became a professor of philosophy and languages at Columbia College; all his life he remained a man of strong and vigorous mind, and shared a cultured home with his active, spirited, sunny-natured wife, an Irish Methodist whose family had come over in the late eighteenth century, and who, true to the maverick nature of that nationality, had no patience with the fulminations of preachers against cards, dancing, novels, theatrical performances, oyster suppers, and ice-cream parlors, indulging in all of them without the least tremor of guilt or of apprehension for her immortal soul. It had been a great adventure for her, after a staid, quiet girlhood, to marry, rather suddenly, this tall young man with his visionary blue eyes and thin, handsome, finely chiseled features. Some people had looked dubious and said he was "not very practical" and would never "make his way," but she ignored them. She had been engaged to a distant cousin, an affair that ended unhappily and hurt her deeply. Then she met Father, and they were instantaneously taken with each other. This, she saw, was the real love of which the other had been but an empty imitation. She understood him; she knew he needed someone to take care of him as he furthered his great ideas, and she undertook, joyfully, to be that someone, unquestioning and ungrudging in the outpouring of her strength. He was untiringly industrious, and anxious above everything in the world to do what he could for his family; he knew much of farming, and his household garden invariably thrived, but he had no talent at all for commercial work, and could be of no practical use in a counting-house or any pursuit of buying and selling. On the other hand, he was an excellent speaker, a profound thinker, and a devoted friend; an exceedingly indifferent writer, but a locally noted lecturer on many of the deep subjects being studied in his day, from Transcendental philosophy on, who throughout the winter months turned many an extra dollar as a lyceum speaker. He also made a good nurse whenever one of his children was ill, for he had an inexhaustible fund of gentleness and untroubled patience. He had an indefinable ability to win respect and obedience from the slightly unruly young men who attended the college, and although not physically imposing he somehow overawed and quieted the village louts who used to try to disrupt the school's games and frolics. Moreover he was quite unflappable. It was said that a friend, wanting to learn if anything could really startle him, once fired a shotgun under his bed as he lay asleep. Father came awake without a fuss, looked under the bed, and mildly asked the friend what on Earth he thought he was doing.

Mother had a great talent for the piano, and her father had been a very fine amateur violinist. She was herself a gifted musician, and Father was a fine amateur painter in his spare time, so from the very first their children were surrounded with art and beauty; the boys both took violin lessons, and their sisters learned to play guitar and mandolin, in addition to which Marjorie was a very competent performer on the piano and harp. She also did watercolors, pencil-sketching, and embroidery, spoke four modern languages (besides English, of course) and had a reading knowledge of two more, and had also mastered Latin; she read French, German, and Italian authors in the original as readily as most girls did English and American ones. The Odyssey had been one of her favorite books from an early age, and she and her brother Hugh had acted out the parts. The family lived at Broadway and 36th, an easy three-mile horseback ride from the college for Father, in a five-bayed cottage, two storeys high, which, with garden and orchard, had been a wedding gift to Mother from a great-aunt who had lived there with her three cats, and whose picture hung in the dining room; when it was originally built, it had been way up in "the country," and controlled a very sizeable farm. Father made only $975 a year, besides his lecture fees, which usually ran $10 a night, but they had a large garden, pets, many books, a great flock of mixed poultry, a maid, a cook, and a gardener. When she was seven or eight Marjorie had three white mice, all girls; she taught them tricks. The young Herringtons got most of their education at home: their father taught them Latin, their mother French; literature and history they taught themselves by wallowing in books, and science came out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Father raised his children as equals—in his eyes girls were different from boys, but not inferior—and had the girls study the same subjects as their brothers: history, mathematics, astronomy, metaphysics, Latin, Greek grammar, as well as the drawing, painting, music, and conversational French deemed proper for young ladies. He encouraged them to read German and French and even philosophy. All four were raised in an atmosphere of high-minded talk, and Marjorie could recall, when she was only eight, hearing her father passionately discussing liberty with a fellow professor (mathematics and astronomy). There should be no law, he said; no man should have the right to judge or condemn another—absolute freedom of the individual was the only thing that would redeem the world. Christ was a great teacher, nothing more. Disband the armies, muster out the police, abolish courts of law, even law itself. To which Professor Darby replied: "Give absolute independence of thought and action to everyone—to, say, a hundred million Russian serfs who haven't learned to think or act for themselves—and the masses would annihilate thousands. It would be a national catastrophe. No, first you must educate them. And how would you guarantee their morals, or prevent the strong from preying on the weak?" It was the first time Marjorie ever understood that some of her beloved parent's ideas weren't really very practical.

Father died, suddenly, in 1852; he was only forty-seven. Brian was twenty-two; he'd only just become a lawyer and taken off for Gold Rush San Francisco, where, unable to return in time for the funeral, he hung out his shingle and was soon well on his way to making a fortune in his practice and in real estate. With what he sent them, and Father's life insurance, Mother and the girls—Rosamond was fourteen and Marjorie nine—were able to keep the house and get by, while eleven-year-old Hugh went to work as an office boy for lawyers and printers, at four dollars a week. Later he became a journeyman printer himself, at five dollars a week plus room and board, then a skilled one making eight, and recently had worked up to reporter, which paid twelve. They considered themselves poor, and the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain; but good pictures hung on the walls, books in quantity filled the recesses, chrysanthemums and Christmas roses bloomed in pots in the dead of winter, and they had a small piano, though it sometimes stayed out of tune for a time, and wine for Mother; no horse or carriage, but there was a live-in cook, and small pets—a family of cats, a canary; plenty to eat, and clothes enough, even formal gowns for Rosamond, though not in the height of fashion, and wood for the fires, and they would truly have felt the wolf was at the door if there was no "sweet dish" at dinner; a large garden full of old-fashioned flowers—coreopsis, mourning bride, hollyhocks, portulaca, larkspur, monkshood, and others fascinatingly named. And if you arrived at teatime there was even a hint of luxury in the brightly shining beauty of the Georgian silver tea service, the fineness of the Chinese porcelain. But if you went further than that first impression, you soon became aware of the need of many, many things. If you put your hands on the seat of the tufted sofa, you touched the spiral of a spring that had pushed through all the padding to the outer covering. No amount of sweeping could hide the great brown places in the carpet where the pattern was quite worn away. All of the furniture coverings were darned and patched, and in order to keep up a front it was necessary to deny themselves things which their friends had as a matter of course, and to make petty economies and makeshifts, mostly in secret, which were unceasingly annoying, like trousers cut down for Hugh from old pairs of his father's. The girls ripped up their old bonnets and contrived one new one out of the remains of three older ones. When a garment was faded past cure, it was whisked wrong side out to show the clean, fresh fabric, and with new trimming was as smart as ever. The family took in four or five college students as boarders each winter, and Rosamond sewed and made dresses for money, and ran a small home-based girls' school at one dollar a month per pupil, with never less than a dozen pupils in the front parlor. When she went off to boarding school at fifteen, it was with a trunkful of turned and dyed clothes, and skirts with the ruffles removed, turned upside down and left plain, the waist refreshed with the best parts of the flounces, and a hat concocted out of whatever was left.

Rosamond was a very beautiful girl who quite cast Marjorie into the shade, though the younger girl was undeniably attractive (or so her mother insisted); but this didn't seem to be a problem between them, for they were genuinely devoted to each other. Marjorie for her part had the ability to say things that would be cruel from anyone else, and have them sound perfectly reasonable, and having been so young when the family was plunged into genteel poverty, naturally developed a very practical and pragmatic character. Despite her Romantic literary leanings, she was inclined to be serious-minded and intense; lightheartedness was unusual in her. At sixteen she was teaching eight or ten pupils of her own, giving music lessons, raising chickens and doing embroidery for sale. That year Rosamond came home, more elegant and self-assured than her sister remembered her, and even more beautiful. She also proved much more clever than her sibs at getting her own way and taking what she wanted. She was very gay and strong-willed, and soon fastened upon a young man, the nephew of a neighbor, who worked as a junior clerk in a bank down on Wall Street and made a "comfortable but modest" salary of fifteen dollars a week, but had "prospects" of better than twice that. He was gentle—perhaps weak—and easily influenced, and soon she had maneuvered him into marrying her, which, with the boys self-supporting, left only Marjorie and her mother at home. The next year Mother died, and since Marjorie couldn't possibly live alone, she was faced with three options: move in with Rosamond and her husband, live with her brother Hugh and do some sort of work at home to pay for her keep, or work and live independently. Or so she thought, until the Bainsleys offered her a fourth.

Mother had wanted her funeral to be bright. She had specifically ordered purple draperies and white horses, and the musicians to play Chopin, Beethoven, and Highland laments, though it rather scandalized some of the neighbors. Marjorie was just turned seventeen then, with bright, calm gray eyes, an inheritance from her mother, neither bold nor downcast, but firm and soft, and a naturally beautiful voice, clear and untroubled; but she was so shy and reticent that she didn't make friends readily, although at home she was the more engaging of the two. Her aunt, who came to stay with her until she could "get her affairs in order," praised her self-possession and feminine delicacy, and her uncle, her father's brother, a learned and devout man who had expected her to be a mere frivolous girl, was delighted to discover that she could read Latin. She also had what she considered unfortunate hair, a wild red of which she had often been desperately ashamed, for it was far from a fashionable hue; not even titian, which would have been bearable. It might have been beautiful had it been blue-black, or even a warm brown, but as it was she considered it her greatest cross to bear; she bound it severely back and hid its length and weight in the confines of a snood, often wishing she dared just hack it off and wear it in the kind of boy-cut she often saw in old portraits of little girls, and felt herself plain and dowdy and dull. Though governesses in novels often married well—Becky Sharp, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield's mother—she had little hope of any such fate for herself. She was a conventionally "accomplished" young lady who played several instruments, did watercolors, pencil sketching, and embroidery, had a thorough knowledge of music, singing, and dancing, and was fluent in four modern foreign languages, though she had little opportunity to use them. She found it slightly bewildering that polite society expected these things, yet offered their possessor few outlets by which to employ them in any meaningful way. Her life had been more circumscribed than she would have wished—more, she was sure, than Father would have wanted for her—and she felt keenly this gap in her education; she longed to see more of the world, and having a good practical knowledge of her own character, was aware that she enjoyed the kind of natural curiosity and strong intellect that would be stimulated by exposure to the art, music, and culture of other countries. She dreamed of hearing Mozart performed in Vienna, or seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; she admired the architect Viollet-le-Duc, the sculptor François Rude, the classically-derived canvases of David, the landscapes of Corot and John Constable, the peasant scenes of Millet, and Delacroix, whose Death of Sardanapalus, Mazeppa, Giaour and the Pasha, and Shipwreck of Don Juan found their inception in the poetry of Byron, and longed to see the originals in their galleries.

She moved into the Bainsley home two weeks after the funeral, and Mrs. Bainsley, as soon as she was out of mourning, paid her dressmaker to "run up some things for you"—three or four day dresses, at least one tea dress, a nice walking dress for when she took the boys out, a dress to go calling in and another to receive callers, a silk dress for formal occasions, a simple "dinner gown" (which could also serve for dances) and a couple of church dresses; outfits for riding, ice-skating, croquet (recently introduced from England), the theater, a walk at Coney Island. The boys were all sweet and charming, and she proved very well suited for the position: she might have been home-schooled, but her education had been a comprehensive one, and she was the kind of capable governess who could teach English grammar and literature, history, geography, some mathematics, Greek, Latin, French, and German, as well as vocal and instrumental music, dance, and drawing, and serve as a model of appropriate behavior to the children and to guide their actions. Everett was eleven then, and she only had him for a year or two until his tutor took over, but he thought her quite the nicest young lady he knew (including his sisters), and his little brothers loved her; John Jr. literally couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been there, and Hiram did so only imperfectly. Marcus was courteous enough, but he had just started at Princeton, and mostly ignored her when he was home. As for Quentin, he was a senior at Columbia, and seemed wholly admirable. He had been taught to box, fence, ride, shoot, dance, and sail, and he did all of them well; he could read five languages besides English. Despite his family's wealth—he got an allowance of $35 in spending money every week, when $100 a year was considered generous—he applied himself to his education, sticking to his books and resisting all temptations except for libraries, athletic games, and other inexpensive pleasures, instead of borrowing money and skylarking in clubs and societies as most of his fellows did. Since she still enjoyed some contacts among the daughters of the professors who had known her father, Marjorie was well aware that he'd made himself responsible for a friend's suit of clothes, which would have cost a good deal more if Quentin's tailor hadn't made it, though he didn't know that.

Her sister Rosamond, who now had a daughter going on two, was determined to see Marjorie married before she was twenty-five, and at Christmastime had told her, "You'll never find a husband if you always dress like a wren!"

"But I don't," Marjorie protested. "Wrens are brown."

"It isn't about color," Rosamond replied impatiently. "It's that what you wear is always simple or severe or both."

Marjorie's clothes were always of the latest fashion, because that reflected on her employers, and the colors she chose were always flattering to her, but she stayed with solids—no plaids or stripes—and invariably ordered the dressmaker to make them up with as little ornament as she dared: no swags, ruffles, bows, rosettes, or feathered hats. She avoided the spreading hoops that were worn by women eager to exude an aura of high fashion, preferring Mme. Demorest's immensely popular small Quaker hoop skirt. It wasn't merely that this was the conventional way for a governess to dress, or that she had a poor opinion of her own looks; it was, in a sense, a matter of self-defense. She would have liked to find a man; what girl wouldn't? But she didn't dare seem to be trying to upstage Lydia and Eleanor; though she was considered a "lady" too, the cold fact was that their parents were her employers, and if she offended them too egregiously (as she certainly would if they got the idea she was trying to put them in the shade), they could get her dismissed. With that on her record, what chance would she have of getting another position? She'd have to go into seamstressing, or maybe government work—or else make her way out to California and throw herself on Brian's charity. She doubted that Rosamond could ever be made to understand this. And the fact was that, for the most part, she liked being a governess. It wasn't a perfect life, but it was much better than many girls in her situation had. If, now and then, she daydreamed, just a little, over her books and music, she had trained herself not to expect those dreams ever to come true...

**SR**

Sunday breakfast was ham and eggs, skillet-browned potatoes, hot golden buttered toast with clear maple syrup, lamb chops, hot kippered herrings, and the summit of every proper wintertime Sunday breakfast, buckwheat cakes. Afterward the family and their guests set out for church. Mr. and Mrs. Bainsley led the way, he in a completely unfashionable but very elegant fawn-colored beaver hat (Slim remembered what Quentin had said about "that need to compete or impress"), a long-tailed, double-breasted frock coat in a sober dark brown, and tight fawn trousers with the now-rare strap under the foot, an exquisite blood-red ruby pin slanted through his black silk tie, a velvet-collared Chesterfield over all; she in emerald-green satin with a long black fur cape and a velvet "pork-pie" hat trimmed with a satin pouf and ostrich feathers, hair netted into a cadogan. Next came Quentin in his dress uniform, with a cousin on either arm—Lydia in crystal-blue silk, braided pillbox hat, and velvet cloak in the stylish Talma cut, Eleanor in amber watered silk, a little flowered pancake hat tipped over her forehead, and a broadcloth coat embellished with bands of velvet. After them walked Charles in his best black-and-white-checked suit, and Marcus in a well-cut blue one and a tall, shiny silk hat. They were followed in turn by Marjorie Herrington in simple dark green moiré taffeta, fastened close about the throat with the inevitable touch of white, and bell-shaped sleeves revealing a fall of white ruffles at the wrist, a long black taffeta cape over it leaving gray-gloved hands free for the two youngest boys, John Jr. in a tan velveteen Zouave suit trimmed with brown silk braid and metal buttons, pearl-buttoned white cotton blouse and little Scotch-style bonnet, Hiram in gray velvet sack coat and knee breeches with plum silk cord trim and frogs and a soft-topped shako cap, both with capes against the cold wind. Bringing up the rear were Slim and Everett, the boy wearing a gray tweed long-pants suit with a silver watch on a weighty "log-chain," a cloak lined with bright plaid, and a beaver "half-plug" hat with a rolled brim and a midget crown not over three inches high, the man, like his friend, in full dress. They passed the journey talking about wild animals, notably those to be found out West, and some of the books Everett had read—Benjamin Drake's Life of Tecumseh, Alonzo Delano's Life on the Plains, The California and Oregon Trail, and Six Months in Kansas, by H. A. Ropes. Slim found the boy bright and articulate, and wondered if this was what it would be like when Andy got to be the same age. "Growin' up in a house like yours," he said, "I guess you've always liked to read."

"Just about," Everett agreed. "I get six bits a week pocket money, and I try to buy one new book of my own at least every couple of weeks, as soon as Father gives it to me. I've got all of Jacob Abbott's Histories, and twenty-six by Mayne Reid, and seventeen of R. M. Ballantyne, and twenty-five by W. H. G. Kingston, and Mr. Archer's The Island Home, and The Young Marooners, and A Boy's Adventures in the Wilds of Australia, and a complete Shakespeare, and lots of others. I can do without sweets, but I can't do without books. I've even got a trunkful of dime novels in the back of my closet, though Mother and Father don't know about that; I buy every new one of Beadle's as soon as it comes out—sixty-three of them so far. I don't know why grown people are so down on them. They're exciting, and the villain always gets confounded in the end, and besides they're history, just like Scott, and nobody minds if I read him."

"Are you still... up at the top of the house with your brothers?" Slim asked.

"No, sir. I moved down to the third floor when I turned twelve. I share with Marcus, except that he's not there most of the time—he's in Princeton. Mr. Schoenfeld—my tutor—comes in by the day, about ten o'clock, and we use the library as a schoolroom; Father's at the shipyard then, and Mother and the girls are usually making calls, or receiving them, or shopping, or something. Did you have a tutor when you were my age, Mr. Sherman?"

"When I was your age," Slim told him, "I was ridin' drag on trail herds, my second season drivin' up from Texas. My father was the trail boss, and he took me along for the first time when I was thirteen."

"Jiminy!" Everett whispered in awe. "You were already doing that when you were only thirteen?"

"Well, I was horse wrangler the first year," Slim hedged. "And a lot of boys work for pay when they're thirteen—or even younger—and not just out West, either."

"Oh, I know that, sir," Everett assured him. "I've seen the newsboys, and the chimney sweeps, and the pigeon-man's assistant, and the boy who fetches and carries for the rag-and-bottle man. And I guess I shouldn't envy them, because they look like they work pretty hard and don't get much for it. But I sort of do, all the same. Mother and Father expect me to go to college, and then into a profession, but I'm not sure I want to. I don't really want to be a lawyer and live off people's quarrels, or a doctor and live off their sicknesses, or a minister and live off their sins—and as for being a banker or a stockbroker, sitting in an office and counting other people's money all my life—" he made a face. "I'd a lot rather do like Father or my uncles, and run an office or a business that does something. But Marcus will get the shipyard, and my other oldest cousins will take over the trading and the rope business and candle factory and oil refinery. I've thought about going to sea on one of our clippers, or being a newspaper man, like Marjorie's brother—he started when he was even younger than I am. Or maybe a Pinkerton man; at least that way I could protect people's lives and property." He sighed. "Mostly I want to do something. I read about the West and I think how wonderful it must be, to help build half of a continent."

"Maybe you should talk to your father about all this," Slim suggested. "I don't know him really well yet, but he doesn't strike me as bein' a tyrant, or as someone who wants his boys to be unhappy. He can't read your mind, you know. You have to tell him."

"Father's all right," said Everett. "He's a lot better than some fathers are, you're right about that, sir. But he doesn't think people have minds of their own till they're eighteen, and by then I'll probably have wasted two years in college."

Slim felt sorry for the boy, though he didn't say so. All he'd ever wanted, as far back as he could remember, was to be a rancher, like his father, who had always wanted the same thing. Even in Illinois, he'd worked cattle ever since he was big enough to sit a gentle horse and herd them. He'd grown up hearing Matt Sherman tell about New Mexico and Texas, the vast ranches there and the great numbers of cattle and horses they owned, and how some day, when he "had a stake," the family would go West and start one of their own—small to begin with, of course, but as he said, "mighty oaks from little acorns grow." Slim knew how satisfying it was to see something build before your eyes, even if it was a lot of hard work and—at first—not very much return. And Everett was right: there was something that stroked a man's vanity not a little, to know that he was taming a land, building a Territory toward statehood.

Plymouth Congregational Church had been the third of that denomination to be organized in Brooklyn, in 1847, when a covenant of twenty-one transplanted New Englanders founded it. It was lodged in a barnlike red-brick building, two and a half storeys high, with a colonnaded porch in front and a low-pitched roof, and neither steeple nor spire; this stood at 57 Orange Street, five blocks nearer to Fulton Street than Montague, between Henry and Hicks, and its pews were arranged in an arc before the pulpit, in what was now becoming a standard layout for evangelical Protestant churches. Slim had heard of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher just as he had of Horace Greeley, though he'd never expected to meet either one, or even see them in the flesh. Beecher, then thirty-four, had been "called" from Indianapolis to take over as the first preacher of Plymouth. Its edifice had been built especially for him, being completed in 1850, with seats for 3000—the biggest hall in town, bigger even than that of the Academy of Music—and he filled them all, every Sunday. (The only celebrity who came close to his accomplishment was Charles Dickens, who managed to pack the place for one night only.) In the years since, he had made a national reputation for himself, speaking to overflow crowds, making the church a center of the abolitionist movement, and publishing his sermons in pamphlet form for wide distribution. A series of lectures addressed to young men, direly warning them against such evils as lust, idleness, gambling, the theater, French novels, and the Strange Woman, was so well received that these too were published in book form. He understood the power of the dramatic gesture and used it to good effect; in 1848 he briefly turned the building into a mock slave market, and in 1856 he did it again. Unlike most speakers, he used humor and informal language, including dialect and slang, in his sermons. He preached not hellfire and brimstone but a "Gospel of love" that emphasized the absolute love of God rather than human sinfulness—what he called "the positive in Christianity." He wanted his parishioners to be as comfortable spiritually as most were socially and financially; "Ye are gods," he would tell them. He also rejected the prohibitions against leisure activities that many preachers considered distractions from a holy life; "Man was meant for enjoyment," he said. He wasn't an abolitionist, but he preached against the institution of slavery; he wasn't a feminist, but he served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1857, speaking at the opening of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children on Manhattan's Bleeker Street, he had flatly declared that "woman has a right to do anything she can do well!" In 1859 he spoke in opposition to the prevailing custom of deep mourning. "Draw not over yourselves the black tokens of pollution," he said. "Do not blaspheme by naming that despair which is triumph and eternal life." For Beecher, death was "only God's call, 'Come home,' " though the bereaved, especially women, would continue to drape themselves in "weeds" for another thirty years or more. In all these ways he could have been called a modern or progressive religionist. Yet he also inveighed against the "whole race of men, whose camp is the Theatre, the Circus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table..." People flocked to see and hear the next Beecher performance, and those who could squeeze in heard him speak on a variety of social and political issues, including temperance, but his favorite subject (before the war, at least) was abolition, which he urged Southerners to adopt voluntarily; his advocacy of this kind of emancipation rather than government action made him a "moderate" in the crusade. "All the natural laws of God are warring upon slavery," he declared in 1853. "Let slavery alone...Time is her enemy. Liberty will, if let alone, always be a match for oppression." But he was much more forceful in his opposition to extending the institution into the Western territories, and when pro-slavery and Free-Soil advocates began duking it out in Kansas, he advised his fellows to ship guns to the latter rather than Bibles. Boxes of rifles labeled "Bibles," and quickly dubbed "Beecher's Bibles" by grateful recipients, soon began arriving in Kansas, which caused some to begin to regard him as a rabid abolitionist. In the year just ended, he had travelled to England and addressed huge audiences in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London; they were hostile at first, but his speeches, good-humored yet defiant and full of harsh truths, won them over completely. It was a great personal triumph and he came home a national hero. By the war's end he would be making $40,000 a year, half of it from his church and the rest from his lyceum lecture tours.

Like most men (and children, especially boy-children), Slim had never been much for passionate religiosity. At an early age he had observed that sermons were usually stiff with learning and went far over the children's heads. He had spent his Illinois boyhood attending a Congregational church, albeit one of an unusually mild character thanks to its liberal, unorthodox minister, his mother having joined that denomination while in boarding school and his father not much caring what church he went to. Sunday afternoons hung heavy and seemed to last forever, even in his own home, which was mainly Southern-rooted, his father's family having originally come from Virginia by way of Kentucky and Ohio, his mother's having initially landed in Baltimore and spread out from there. Far worse were the Yankees (the local term for New England Presbyterians), who seemed to be born to a distrust of casual, unpremeditated enjoyment. They didn't read for pleasure in the morning, candy before noon was scandalous, and music, if any, was for evenings—which the young Slim found bewildering, because God had made the birds, hadn't He, and they sang all day long, even on Sundays. Their Sabbath (they always called it "Sabbath," not "Sunday") began at six o'clock Saturday night with baked beans. Next morning they had cold breakfast, everything for Sabbath being prepared the day before. They went to church, baby and all, and came back to a cold but not untasty dinner. They spoke in a different tone of voice—a Sabbath tone—and not very much. The whole day was given over to worship, solemnity, and not doing things. The silences were awful. "I don't like Sabbaths," Slim (then called "Matty" or "young Matt") had once said, when he was eight or nine years old. "They're not like Sundays. You have to sit still as the ground and watch the trees grow." Even his mother, though she was sincerely devout, had felt that there were many more interesting subjects to discuss besides Heaven, and he could remember the look she'd get on her face when she saw Mrs. Fenton, from the farm six miles up the road, bearing down on her at any community function: Mrs. Fenton's faith was such an all-consuming obsession that she talked constantly and exclusively about God, Heaven, salvation, and repentance, which made her listeners at first bored, then irritated, and finally angry. Slim recalled once overhearing his mother tell his father how sick she was of Sarah Fenton's visions and boastings of holiness. (Then she'd said, "And if I call myself a Christian, I should be ashamed to say such a thing," and his father had said, "Just because you follow Jesus don't mean you can't think for yourself, Mary. The Lord gave you a brain for just that purpose—and He's got no brief for hypocrites, either.") Though each group of Congregationalists had the right to determine what it would believe, and a liberal majority could set the tone for the whole group—which accounted for the fact that many could dance, play cards, drink in moderation, go to the theater, and read what they pleased on Sundays (not merely the Bible, the Catechism, and the Sunday-school paper) with quite untroubled consciences—they were very close in doctrine to the Presbyterians: in the older regions of the country, members were likely to shift from one to the other, with no one thinking the less of them, and under the 1801 Plan of Union the two groups, settling in a new community, could combine to establish a church. In practice it often happened that the latter outnumbered and overwhelmed the former, which was likely to lead to secession and the hiving off of new congregations. The most devout were obsessed with the concepts of God, sin, and salvation, and inclined to embrace what they saw as the only plausible explanation for disasters on every scale, from wars and epidemics to crop failures to the deaths of small children—God's wrath, His righteous anger at humanity's iniquitous way of life. God was the most potent and motivating force in most people's lives. Existence on earth was seen as only part of a journey toward salvation in Heaven, which was all that mattered in the long run, and people turned inward to contemplate and embrace an invisible kingdom, focusing their efforts on building a society supported by spiritual rather than "worldly" values. The evangelical churches—Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist—had reimposed many of the prohibitions of seventeenth-century Calvinism at the beginning of the nineteenth, genereally condemning all forms of commercial amusement as "the door to all sinks of iniquity," banning the racecourse and all games of chance, disapproving severely of dancing (even though the Bible itself described David as dancing before the Ark), and pouring vitriol on the stage, the concert-hall, and the circus. The more ascetic preachers of every sect felt that "the intrigues, vanities, and luxuries of the world" opposed a right relationship with God, and that religious persons were distinguished less by either faith or works than by a uniform avoidance of "worldly amusements," including even the reading of novels. As he grew older, Slim had begun to realize that this desperate care really meant just one thing—that the living faith was waning, the strong, soul-freshening vision of its founders growing dim, and prohibitions, "shalt-nots," and punishments were all they knew to protect the heavenly thing and snatch it back into life. Like his father, he had little patience for it: in a largely secular society, a religion that allowed no neutral ground between God's work and the Devil's pastimes demanded greater asceticism than he was willing to grant, and though neither of them thought of it in exactly those terms, they both recognized the failure of the church to realize that a people growing away from the simpler pastimes of an agricultural society—as even farmers were with the development of labor-saving machinery—had to have some substitute for them. He knew that so-called "thought leaders," like Lyman Beecher and his sons, certified the legitimacy of any pleasure only if it prepared the mind for the life of duty, and he had very few hopes for Henry Ward.

He might have remembered that even so eloquent a Calvinist as the famous preacher's father had played a lively fiddle and accounted Sir Walter Scott his favorite author, that his daughter Harriet had mentioned "the almost universal clerical pipe," and that the family had sung ballads as well as hymns around the piano. He found Beecher not a shouter, but a logical expositor (by his own lights) whose sermon, on this particular morning, had to do with duty—to one's family, one's country, one's God. The main thrust of it seemed to be that adherence to duty brought its own satisfactions, even when it was to none of these three but only to the obligations imposed by society or friendship or one's own notions of right and wrong. It wasn't noisy, and it wasn't difficult for an ordinary person to understand; after the doubts he'd expressed in his most recent letter to his mother, it even brought Slim a certain amount of comfort. He was doing something, as Everett wanted to: putting in his little bit at keeping the country together, or rather reuniting it so it could go on to fulfill the special destiny that must lie in store for so unique an experiment in human and political institutions.

After the service, the Bainsleys and Marjorie let the boys run on ahead to work the stiffness out of their legs, with big brother Marcus to ride herd on them at street crossings, while they followed more slowly. Seeing his chance, Slim made his way to the governess's side. "May I walk you home, Miss Herrington?"

She hesitated just a moment, as if considering the question. "If you want to, Mr. Sherman," she said at length.

He offered his arm, and they started back, walking at the decorous pace thought appropriate for both ladies and Sundays. He felt very conscious of his own countrified roots, but he knew he had a better education, and a better grounding in polite behavior, than many young men of similar background might have, and he was encouraged by thoughts of the gentle noble warmth of true love, as in the songs of Stephen Foster and a hundred yellowback novels in which low-born young men won fine wives by rescuing them from some terrible fate—the sinking canoe, the runaway horse, the lustful clutches of the dastard. And he had to make a start; he had less than thirty days. There could be letters once he went back to camp, but first he had to get himself on such a footing with her that she'd welcome a correspondence. After casting about for a safe subject of conversation, he decided to go with her profession. "Have you been a governess long?" he asked.

"Just less than four years," she said. "I began when I was seventeen."

That made her twenty-one, like himself. Slim remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the French believed that to make a good match, the woman should never be younger than half the man's age plus seven. "Everett told me you've got a brother."

"Two. Hugh is with the New York Sun, and Brian is an attorney out in San Francisco, and investing in land besides. And one older sister, Rosamond; she's married and has a little girl."

"I'm almost an only, myself," he ventured. "I don't think you were there when I showed Mr. and Mrs. Bainsley the picture I carry of my family. I've just got one brother, fifteen years younger, or nearly."

"You must have had a large part in raising him," she said.

It took him a minute to realize that she thought he looked older than he was—which, on reflection, he supposed a farm boyhood, five years working range cattle, and going on three at war would do to you. "Not really. Andy was only four when I left home to enlist—just about big enough to sit in front of Pa or me and ride around the place. But I did teach him to swim. Ma insisted that he learn as soon as he was big enough to run around well; there's a creek just down behind our house that she worried about him fallin' into, and a lake on the property, though that's a couple of miles, farther than someone that little would be likely to go on his own without wearin' out before he got there."

She let a hint of a smile cross her face. "There's a certain... satisfaction... in passing on what you know. I've always found it so, and I've been teaching since I was thirteen."

"You like bein' a governess, then."

"Yes, I suppose I do," she agreed. "Especially with the Bainsleys. I've never felt I had to... to be concerned about... inappropriate advances," and she blushed just a bit; he somehow got the sense that she was embarrassed, not so much by the phrase itself, as by suggesting to a near stranger that such things might be part of a governess's world.

"But you won't be able to keep at it forever," he guessed. "Not here, at least. Everett said somethin' that made me figure each of the boys will go to college at sixteen. That's ten years for John, and he'll have at least two or three years with a tutor before that, won't he?"

"Yes. Unless Marcus, or perhaps one of his cousins, becomes a parent by then, I'll have to go to another family. But Mr. and Mrs. Bainsley will make sure I get into a good one. I trust them to do right by me. They've been very kind."

He decided on a bold stroke. "There's another possibility, you know. I can't see a girl as... as pretty, and bright, and sweet as you are... stayin' single another ten years, or even another seven or eight. You must get to meet a lot of young men in this job; the Bainsleys don't seem to mind you takin' a part in their social life."

"I'm a paid employee," she agreed, "but I'm not a servant, and I'm not treated as one, the way governesses are in England. I'm considered the family's equal in birth, manners, and education—a 'respectable and worthy' person, who, as the daughter of a gentleman, is both well-bred and accomplished; just not in wealth. Girls in my situation often marry into good families, at least in books. But..."

The silence that followed that word seemed to echo like the bells from Brooklyn's many church steeples. "But?" he prompted, as Quentin had to him the day before.

She slanted a look at him. "I don't know why I'm talking like this," she confessed. "I'm never so... so forward, and... and what you said—about me—sounded very much like flattery, which I can't bear. Maybe it's that I know you won't be here long, so I feel safe in telling you things I'd never mention to any other man; and you're a guest, and I want to make you feel welcome, as I've been made to feel. My sister says I'm too shy and don't put myself in people's eyes as I should. And yet... I feel that I can trust you."

"You can," he said, trying to strike a balance between passionate and merely reassuring response.

She hesitated again. "It's Quentin. I've... I've thought very... highly of him... ever since I came here. He's... not like a lot of young men in rich families—not arrogant, or wild, or..."

"I know," he agreed, with a sinking feeling. I might have figured, he thought. He's known her since she came; he had at least a few months, before he enlisted, to get in ahead of me... "I was kind of surprised myself, when I realized we were getting to be friends; he wasn't what I'd figured a rich family's son would be. Not that I'd known many, till then." He realized he was almost babbling. "I'm sorry; you were saying?"

She sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why I stay on, knowing he's part of the family. It's the boys, I suppose, and the fact that, between the militia and later the Army, he didn't spend a lot of time here. He doesn't like me, you see."

"You must be wrong," Slim blurted, wondering in astonishment if his friend had all his good sense (maybe he'd been caught in too many cannonades); how could any man fail to like this girl?

"Oh, no, I'm quite sure of it. He avoids me most of the time, and when he can't, he ignores me. I don't even know what I did to give him such a dislike of me."

For the first time Slim realized consciously that Quentin did seem to have been purposely steering well clear of her. Had he even greeted her in the parlor on New Year's? Certainly he hadn't sat near her there, or at the dining table, or in the library; hadn't spoken more than a dozen words to her, at least not in Slim's hearing—and he'd escorted his cousins to church this morning; even if she had the little boys to supervise, surely he could have left the girls to Marcus, and walked with her if he'd wanted to. I've got a chance! he thought. If he can't, or won't, see what a wonderful person she is, he's got no complaint to make if I try to move in.

"Sometimes people just don't... don't take to each other," he noted. "Not even when they're... thrown closely together. I've seen it in country schools; they're so small, you'd think everybody'd get along out of just the novelty of bein' around someone who's not family, but there are always special friendships and special rivalries—even enmities. They don't always seem to make a lot of sense, but they're there."

"Maybe it's just something people do," she agreed. "I've tried not to think about it, though it's not easy."

"Well," said Slim boldly, "if he won't declare himself, that leaves the field open for someone else, doesn't it? Why spend your life longin' for someone you can't have—someone who doesn't even care for you?"

"It doesn't seem very sensible," said Marjorie, "and I've always taken some pride in my good sense. Still... it's hard to give up a dream, especially after you've had it for three years."

"I know about dreams," he said. "I watched my father make his a reality, or at least start to—even helped him do it. But I know we were lucky. Sometimes... sometimes you just can't. The time isn't right, or the circumstances don't come together. It doesn't mean you can't find a new dream—maybe not as... special, or satisfactory, as the first one, but—well, Pa says that any man who's worth the powder it would take to blow him up has a dream. Some call it ambition, or a goal in life, but the words don't matter. They mean the same thing. No reason a woman can't have one." No reason a man can't try to make her see what it could be, he thought, but I don't want to seem too pushy. Even if we don't have much time together—the main thing is to get her thinkin' well enough of me to want to get to know me better, to see whether we could make anything further out of it. He knew that the war, like all wars, had broken down the traditional restraints that had previously guided courtship rituals. Single women boldly initiated correspondence with soldiers by inserting letters in boxes of supplies they shipped off to the front or to hospitals; others answered newspaper ads placed by soldiers who wanted to correspond with females other than their own relations. Hasty marriages had taken place between young men heading off to serve and girls who in peacetime might have insisted on at least several months' engagement, if only so they could have time to accumulate their trousseaux. All these things Slim had seen, or heard of, among both officers and men. Why couldn't he and Marjorie do the same? He wasn't suggesting, or even thinking, that they rush into anything. He was willing to give it time to develop, if only he could persuade her to do the same.

"—a word I've been saying?"

"What?" He suddenly realized he hadn't been listening. "I'm sorry, I was woolgathering."

"I know it might not have looked like it," she said, "but I was listening to all the things you said in the library, New Year's evening. I wish the boys could hear some of it; I know a lot about older countries, but not much about the frontier, and they should learn about what's happening out West, and what it's like there. Would you come upstairs, mornings, if you've got nothing else to do, and talk to them?"

The idea excited him. She could learn right along with them, hear something of the land he lived in, the way he lived, what it might mean to be a part of his future—and all without his having to seem to be aggressively pursuing her. She could get to know something of what had shaped him, what his work was like. "I'd like that."

"Lessons usually begin around ten, after we get back from our walk, though we don't go out if the weather's really dreadful," she said. "I can send one of the maids to find you when we're ready."

"I'll watch for her," he promised, thinking that this was the very last picture he would ever have had of what a courtship would be like, but that if his object was a bright, intellectual girl—like his own mother—it was somehow very suitable.

**SR**

Even in households of the Anglican persuasion—perhaps the most liberal of the Protestant denominations after Unitarianism—all amusements, as well as work, were forbidden on Sundays. There was no drawing or painting. The main standby was reading, but there again the field was limited by tedious notions of what was appropriate for Sunday. Tom Brown (Everett thought him "a brick"), Robinson Crusoe, Hans Christian Andersen and The Pilgrim's Progress were permitted, but not the Arabian Nights, or Scott, or any novel; non-fiction, like the twenty-two volumes of Jacob Abbott's biographical series—Alexander the Great, Alfred the Great, Charles I, Charles II, Cleopatra, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Genghis Khan, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Margaret of Anjou, Mary Queen of Scots, Nero, Peter the Great, Pyrrhus, Queen Elizabeth, Richard I, Richard II, Richard III, Romulus, William the Conqueror, and Xerxes, written between 1848 and 1861—in Everett's private bookcase, being, of course, quite another matter. While they waited for dinner to be announced, the Bainsleys wrote letters, said their Sunday lessons, passed time among their pets and books, or talked quietly; afterward, if the weather allowed, everyone turned out for a walk, and in these excursions the children were taught to see and love the providence of God in the beautiful miracles that Nature works constantly before the eyes of those who can see. "Looking at the beautiful things you can see will help you to understand the more beautiful ones you can't," Mr. Bainsley would say, and quote the line from As You Like It that spoke of "Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything."

The cook and the maids had taken advantage of the family's absence to go to Mass themselves, and since the Catholic Sabbath ended with the close of the service, there was nothing to prevent the Bainsleys from enjoying a good hot Sunday dinner at the traditional hour of two o'clock. There was cream of barley soup, then a roast loin of pork, stuffed with sage and onion and black pepper, and stuffed duck with applesauce, boiled potatoes and scalloped potatoes, sliced beets with butter sauce, boiled cabbage, canned peas and green beans, and assorted relishes—corn relish, pepper relish, green-tomato relish—besides hot crusty biscuits and buttermilk bread, butter and tomato preserves and lemon honey to spread on them, and for dessert a frosted two-layer yellow cake with custard filling and a caramel pudding. "John," said Mrs. Bainsley as she passed the bread plate, "we really must give some sort of party in Quentin's and Slim's honor while they're here, don't you think? Nothing grand, of course; there won't be time for that. Just Henry and Laurence and their families, and a few of the neighbors—people who might be interested in the West, particularly."

Lydia clasped her hands together in excitement. "Oh, yes, Papa, do let's! We could ask the Holtons, and then there'd be six of us to take turns playing the piano for dancing—Eleanor and me, Marjorie, and Vangie and Emily and Louise. And Barry Osgood could bring his violin—"

"Well, I won't say I hadn't given it some thought, my dears," Mr. Bainsley replied. "That's assuming our guests don't mind being the center of attention for the evening—and I warn you, Slim, you'll be expected to talk about investments, just as you did the other night."

"I don't mind, sir." What Slim didn't say was that this would give him a legitimate opportunity to pursue his barely-begun courtship—or that, for the most part, owing to his general inexperience with girls, he'd be more comfortable talking to the men than trying to compete for the women, which, if Marjorie was as shy as she'd hinted, he probably wouldn't need to do where she was concerned.

"Very well, then," said Bainsley, "I'll leave the details to the women. When did you think we might do this?" he asked his wife.

"I thought next Monday, since it will only be a small affair. That should give all the ladies time to freshen up their gowns if necessary. I can write out the invitations tomorrow and get them right out."

"Monday it is, then. And I see that The Bohemian Girl is coming to the Academy of Music; perhaps I might send the yard messenger to get tickets in the morning. Are you familiar with the opera, Slim?"

"I've heard some of the music, sir—who hasn't? But I've never seen it performed."

"No scruples against the stage, I take it."

"No, sir. My family doesn't see anything wicked in theatrical performances; we've just never had much opportunity to go to anything but a few amateur ones." In the East, notions of middle-class respectability might require an aversion from all forms of commercial entertainment, but once the playhouse became an important part of the frontier life of trans-Appalachia, it had grown and flourished unhampered by the restraints it had in the older regions. Therefore, in Hancock County, where he'd been born and raised, Carthage, the county seat and largest town—almost, in fact, the only town, apart from a few crossroads settlements—might be only seldom visited by professional theatrical companies, but like many such communities, had early established a "Thespian corps" to fill the vacuum. The county's 1700-odd people, who had the great advantage of a county seat located almost exactly in its geographical center and therefore equally accessible to all of them, were occasionally entertained by local amateur efforts—comedies, minstrel and variety shows, even serious dramas—put on by an acting club that comprised many of the town's more prominent young men, who, to help in attracting an audience, usually allocated the proceeds to some worthwhile community cause—buying books for the library, building a needed bridge, contributing a fund to purchase an organ for one of the town churches. They had to perform in the town hall, but perform they did. Dancytown had nothing similar yet—"but give us time, we'll get there. Denver's barely five years old and it's had theater from the start—though of course it was bigger from the start too, because of the gold."

The next morning Marcus took scarcely time for a cup of coffee before taking a cab (necessary because of the weight and bulk of his trunk) to the ferry, to retrace more or less part of Slim's and Quentin's rail journey on his way back to college at Princeton. Bainsley invited Slim along to see the family shipyard, as he'd asked to do, and Slim felt obliged to go, since he'd made the request well before agreeing to become an informal part-time tutor to the "little boys." The Navy Yard was fully a mile and a half from the house on a straight line, more by way of the grid of streets, and the Bainsley shipyard lay beyond even that, so a journey by streetcar was required. Slim met Bainsley's "right-hand man," a ruddy, competent Scot named Farquhar MacCaig—"That's F-a-r-q-u-h-a-r, Leftenant, for all 't'is pronounced 'Farker' "—who was the supervising engineer for all the yard's projects and had two sons he was bringing up to assume the same responsibilities in time; their next brother, Valentine, who was barely sixteen, had recently succeeded in persuading his father and Mr. Bainsley to let him serve as a night watchman, "syne he's too wee a lad yet for the Army to take," as MacCaig explained, "and he's resolved to do his part for his country." All three of the MacCaigs wore the Farquharson clan tartan, which was chiefly blue and green, in some form—trousers, mufflers, jaunty tam-o'shanters—and Farquhar himself bore on the latter the clan badge, with its quartered shield supported by what looked at first to Slim like a pair of tabby cats each with a forepaw upraised, but which Farquhar said were Highland wildcats.

The yard had only two ways, and it had lost a good few of its laborers to the Army and the Navy, but it was still bustling; the remaining workers, indeed, were harder at work than ever, having to make up for the ones who were absent if the business was to remain current on its military subcontracts. Edgar MacCaig, the younger of the two sons, took over as Slim's guide, leading him on a tour of the various shops and other buildings, then working out toward the river. Barely a quarter of a mile downstream was Wallabout Bay, a semicircular indentation in the Brooklyn shore, about half a mile across at its mouth and slightly less than 600 yards deep, where the Federal government had established the Brooklyn Navy Yard over sixty years before. Centering it was an island, probably artificial since it curved on its landward side to match the curve of the bay and was nearly straight on its riverward face; this was fringed with docks occupied by ships both steam- and sail-driven, presumably Navy craft in for refit but not requiring the kind of work that would involve hauling them up ways. Beyond were the shore facilities, including the Navy Yard proper, which occupied roughly a third of the total ground area of the base, squeezed up against the farther, downriver corner of it. The air was very clear this morning, and Slim could make out the ways of three drydocks, backed by about a dozen shops, storehouses, and similar buildings, most of them arranged in three rows parallel to the shoreline. The nearer two-thirds of the base seemed to be made up of barracks, officer housing, and other buildings of similar nature. "A man could swim it, gin he was willin' to daur the current, though I'd na do it at this season," Edgar noted. "Or he could take a wee skiff and be there in ten minutes or less, what wi' the current and often the wind to help him along."

Slim could make out a sentry—probably a Marine—pacing a beat along the wall on the nearer arc of the base shoreline, bundled in an overcoat much like his own. "The problem might be findin' the skiff," he noted. "I've been on a ferry on this river, and it doesn't strike me as bein' especially well suited for pleasure boating—not that I know a lot about the subject."

"Nay, that 't'isna," Edgar agreed, "but as for the skiff, 't'would be simple enough to find. We use them oursel's, often enough, for paintin' and such, or we did, when we were buildin' clippers here." He pointed out two little cockleshells of boats tucked neatly end-to-end under the pier they stood on, each with its mast, rolled sail, and oars neatly stowed in the bilge. They would have been very easy to miss, unless you knew they were there, or knew exactly where to look.

"Sounds like they're keepin' busy over there," Slim observed. Even the crosswise wind couldn't entirely keep the steady racket of construction from drifting over to the Bainsley property.

"Aye," said Edgar. "Gunboats, mainly, for the Navy, to keep the blockade-runners out of the Southern ports. They built the Monitor, too, ye ken, though syne then they've farmed out the most of the ironclads on subcontract."

Slim's eyes tracked around the landscape in plainsman style, picking out notable features. "What's that hill?" he asked, pointing out a rising patch of ground behind the government yard, almost due south of it. "Seems like a spy with a pair of field glasses could look right down into the yard from up there."

"Aye, nae doot he could, for all the good 't'would do him." The height in question, Edgar explained, was Fort Greene Hill, which was even higher than Brooklyn Heights. South of Nassau Street, City Park, which had been begun in 1835 by dumping dirt from the hill into a noisome swamp on Wallabout Bay, had, after a good decade of disastrous, insect-infested smelliness, solidified in the mid-'40's, but was still not usable when, in 1848, another park was opened on the hill; its official name was Washington Park, but everyone called it Fort Greene. Its thirty acres were well used both by ordinary folk and for Fourth of July speeches, memorial observances, and the send-off of the troops in '61. When Lincoln called for volunteers, 50,000 Brooklyn men assembled there, and before the end of April three regiments had departed for the front. Others followed: the Schwartze Jager, which, as its name suggested, was mostly German; the Irish Legion; a company of Zouaves made up chiefly of city firemen; the celebrated 14th Regiment, or 84th New York Volunteers, which had fought at both battles of Bull Run, at Chancellorsville, and at Gettysburg, and was to see service at Spotsylvania and The Wilderness as well. As was true of units on both sides, casualties were high: of the 1000 members of the Brooklyn Phalanx that marched down to the ferry in '61, only 234 would return three years later. "I ken ye meanin'," the young Scot concluded, "but 't'is so weel-used a place there'd like to be questions asked if the same lad—aye, or even more than one—were to be seen peerin' through a glass at the yard o'er time. And e'en if not, they can look all they care to, but ne'er in the world will they do aught of damage from yon. Nay, 't'is a huntle more like that such donsie work would be set in train from nearer at hand, and that the Navy weel knows. I misdoot ye can set een on it from here, but from Sands Street yon Rebels micht well get a near-by look, or even hear a word or two of gree gossip." Sands lay on the west side of the yard, he said, and ran up to its very gates; ever since the 1820's it had been famous among sailors the world over for its bars, girls, and tattoo parlors. On the other side of the Heights—as Slim already knew from riding across its upper reaches with Quentin on Saturday—was State Street, another red-light district, though lacking its counterpart's flair: Sands got the boisterous sailors whose ships were tied up at the Navy Yard, and among whom it wouldn't be difficult for a spy, given an elementary disguise, to hide out in the crowds; State catered to the commercial seamen whose ships docked at the foot of Atlantic Avenue—a less violent crowd, although State remained one of those streets that children raised in the Heights were told to avoid. "And but for some further circumstance, e'en that would do it little ill. Dinna fash yersel', Leftenant. Ye'll ha' noted the walls they've built this side Washington and Flushing Avenues, forninst a' such dukery-packery."

A sternwheel steamboat intruded on their discussion as it went by, plowing into the current. "What boat's that?" Slim asked. "I didn't realize there was traffic up the East River—of course I'd heard about the Hudson steamers."

It was, Edgar told him, the Oceanus, which made a regular run from New York to Providence, Rhode Island, via the East River and the Sound. "A hundred and sixty miles or better it is each way. Late gettin' off the day—mostly we see her a good two hours earlier. Trouble wi' the engines, I make na doot. All the civilian craft get shorter shrift than the military, and they maun wait their turn when the repair crews are called for."

"Same thing on the railroads," Slim agreed. "But at least on the boats they feed you better, from what I know of the ones on the rivers before the war."

"Aye, there's that," said Edgar. "So 't'is nae great hardship gin she's a wee delayed makin' Providence."

Gazing down the choppy gray river toward Governors Island and the Battery, Slim could see the harbor, much as portrayed in the crowded Currier & Ives lithographs, with sloops, schooner yachts, steam ferries, and every other imaginable kind of seagoing craft going about their business. He pivoted in place, looking first inland toward the comfortable neighborhood of Williamsburg, then to the eastern shore of Manhattan directly across from it, with East River Drive closely following the line of the water, though only from the Battery up to about Jackson Street was the east shoreline as thickly fringed with docks as was the other. At this particular point, from Manhattan to the Navy Yard, the river, to a man accustomed to estimating range, appeared only a little over 500 yards wide. If you had a Sharps single-action breechloader—a Big Fifty, for instance—and got yourself into a good cozy prone position below the Drive, and assuming the wind wasn't against you and you had a decent light, you could pick off those Navy Yard sentries like ducks in a shooting gallery. But that wouldn't do much damage except as far as the men themselves were concerned; the deepest ways of the yard itself were as much as another hundred yards in, and that didn't even count the shops and supply buildings. No, if you meant the place any mischief you'd need to get onto the property itself, and as Edgar had observed and Slim himself had already seen, the landward side of it was protected by stout walls doubtless manned night and day by armed sentries. "I've read that there's a lot of Confederate sympathy in New York," he noted.

" 'T'is but natural, I'm thinkin', what wi' Tammany Hall makin' itself useful to every shipload of immigrants that docks o'er yonder," said Edgar. "Ye'll have heard of the riots this last summer; 't'was the Irish, chiefly, and they're Democrats every one. Mayor Wood—Fernando Wood, that was; he's back in the House of Representatives for a second term now—went sae far as to propose that New York declare herself a free city in '61, and last year he was thick wi' Vallandigham in reorganizin' the Peace Democrats. Still, 't'was New Yorkers who founded the Sanitary Commission, so I maunna think ill of them all."

"Quentin told me Mr. Bainsley's active in the Commission," Slim noted.

"Aye, that he is. 'T'is a shame ye'll na be able to stay on for Washington's Birthday, as he and the rest have a fine Sanitary Fair in hand to be held beginnin' then." The ladies of Cincinnati, he explained, having raised $240,000 for the Commission, had issued a challenge to all other cities to surpass them, and Bainsley and his fellows had taken up the gauntlet. Their Great Sanitary Fair, as it was being called, was to be held at the Academy of Music and in two temporary buildings being erected nearby. There were to be cattle shows, art shows, military band concerts, displays of modern machinery, exhibits of relics and curiosities from the Orient (many lent by the Bainsley brothers themselves), an official exhibition newspaper called Drum-Taps, a mammoth painting (illuminated by a thousand gas-jets) of a Commission battlefield hospital at work, and the New England Kitchen, a reproduction of an eighteenth-century Yankee farmhouse where costumed waitresses would serve clam chowder, cornbread, and baked beans.

"I wish I could see it," Slim agreed, "but our leave began the morning of the thirtieth, and it took us a full day to get to Jersey City, so we'll probably have to start back no later than the morning of the twenty-eighth."

Edgar sighed. "Ah, well, 't'is possible the year will see the end of this war. We maun live in hope and dee in despair, as my grandsire was wont to say."

**SR**

Over the days that followed, Slim settled more and more comfortably into the life of the Bainsley household. John Bainsley, he discovered, was a discriminating lover of music and literature, who attended plays and musicales, quoted Goethe and Shakespeare at length, and studied Plato and Aristotle in the original Greek. He also loved to play billiards and the piano, to drive and to ride; his wife often joined him in the last of these, and his chestnut gelding and her gray mare, which doubled as the family's carriage team, were kept active throughout the pleasant weather and even occasionally to draw a rented sleigh in winter. His ruling creed was "moderation in all things"—including "woe, want, waste, poverty, excessive riches, murder, arson, slander, fever, contagion, lust, covetousness, drunkenness, gluttony, lying, robbery, cruelty, theft, and above all injustice."

His wife wasn't tall—indeed next to him she looked almost elfin—but she had, as Slim had already seen, elegant features and a sense of style, along with a wicked sense of humor and a lively intellect. She shared her husband's abiding interest in music and the theater, but was also something of an invalid, suffering frequently from "sick headaches"—what a later generation would call migraines—and a mild heart condition. These, however, she considered something of a blessing, as they gave her a perfect excuse to mostly avoid the social whirl, something in which she had little interest. Ever since recovering from the Panic of '37, which it had done in record time, New York had been increasingly rich and socially competitive, thanks to the wealth accruing to merchants and businessmen and the presence of a large and prosperous middle class. In a city of well-to-do and newly-rich families, the social life was more competitive than in others, and while Mary Alice Linton Bainsley might live in independent Brooklyn, she had been born in Manhattan and retained many connections there, which might, but for the excuse of health, have obliged her to spend a good deal more time across the river than she did. Given the choice, she preferred to be a hostess, not a guest, and to entertain at home; Quentin said that her dinners were usually successful, thanks to an excellent cook and her talent for choosing well-matched guests. She was the only daughter of her father's second wife, whose grandmother had come from southern France, Provence; some claimed there had been a bit of Spanish, or perhaps gypsy, in the blood, and certainly she was quick and bright and impulsive enough to give some weight to the idea. She was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, yet five minutes' observation was enough to show that they had married for an affection undiminished by the intervening years—or by the age difference. Their union, like that of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was a true love match. Both were devoted to it and to their children, and they brought an obvious joy and affection to their family life which could hardly fail to set a good example as their sons and daughters grew toward marriageable age.

Both took enormous pride in the family's seafaring history and were, if in no sense vain, pleasantly proud of the work that had gone into the fortune it had made them. By the time of the Revolution, American sails and seamen had already been freighting miscellaneous cargoes all about the Atlantic and Mediterranean world. The country had become a great nursery of seafaring men and the endless forests provided ships to carry them all and more besides. Before independence, it was the fisheries that were the source of New England's fortune; afterward, when they failed to revive, the discovery of new markets for old commodities, and new commodities for old markets, stirred the region's imagination. Up until the '40's Boston had owned more ships than even New York, ships that gathered cargoes in every corner of the world. New England vessels traded with the west coast of Africa, bought goatskins and ostrich feathers in Cape Town and copal for varnish from Zanzibar on the continent's east coast, rubber for overshoes in Brazil. They picked up sandalwood in Hawaii—incense for "heathen idols"—or otterskins in British Columbia to trade for Chinese tea. They found cheap hides in California or South America to supply the new shoe factories of Lynn, which turned them into shoes for California again. They sought out the best coffees in the Southern Hemisphere, bought Peruvian bark to make quinine for malaria sufferers in Tunis, jute for gunnysacks, linseed oil for paint and ink, shellac for ships and furniture. They carried ice from Saugus for the West Indies, shirtings from the Lowell mills to Montevideo, sugar from Cuba to Sweden and Russia, palm-leaf hats to Hawaii. In their holds, large transshipments of American tobacco and French wine, ginseng and iron shared space with cartons of shoes and boxes of candles. The opening of the East India trade led to the use of nankeen, a standby for sturdy wear, as well as fine shawls, calico, dimity, and chintz. New England captains had practically monopolized the lucrative fur trade of the Northwest Coast, Salem and Boston were centers of vigorous commerce with the West Indies, and trade with South America was particularly lively, though often, before the revolutions of the '20's, Yankee captains had trouble with the Spanish governments there; some were fired on, others tricked ashore and imprisoned, accused of spying for rebel groups, their ships robbed. As for the Far East, American contact with it dated from August 30, 1784, when a Baltimore-built, 360-ton copper-bottomed merchantman, the Empress of China, arrived at Canton with a cargo of furs, cotton, and more than 40 tons of ginseng—a great gamble, being ten times what the most optimistic forecasts had guessed the whole annual Celestial consumption of the herb would be. It turned out to be a fantastic success, and was exchanged profitably for silks, tea, and chinaware. This triumph led quickly to the development of an immensely valuable trade. In 1786 the Grand Turk followed the Empress's lead, setting off with a grab-bag of goods put at $32,000; when she returned eighteen months later, her cargo of Oriental goods was valued at $100,000. In 1787 a group of Boston merchants purchased and outfitted the ship Columbia and the sloop Lady Washington and sent them around the Horn to the Northwest to trade oddments for furs, particularly sea-otter, to the Indians, and the furs for tea with the Chinese. The captain in charge found that a single chisel—valuable to a people who built houses out of plank, not to speak of ocean-going canoes—would purchase a fine pelt. The Lady Washington remained in Pacific waters, plying between the Northwest and Canton and developing en route a lively trade in sandalwood in the eastern islands, while the Columbia returned to Boston harbor in 1790, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. Two years later she made the voyage back, and her captain discovered the river named after her and caused to be built the sloop Adventure. By 1789 fifteen American vessels were trading at Canton. In contrast to the lumbering, kettle-bottomed, 1500-ton British East Indiamen which had ruled the trade before, few were as large as 200, some as small as thirty-five to fifty; but the daring seamanship, fast sailing, and shrewd dealing of the American traders ultimately exposed the inefficiency of the British monopoly. During the heyday of the trade thirty or forty of them a year did an annual trade of about $10,000,000—an average of slightly under $286,000 per. Lucky voyages often produced clear gains of 100%, and even more fabulous returns were sometimes recorded, just as in the Santa Fe traffic, in which, as Slim recalled his father telling, the earliest traders earned $6 on every $1 of investment, and some later ones made $10. Otter skins sold in Canton at rates ranging from 35c. to three or four dollars, with one dollar being the commonest price, three-fourths of it paid in tea. The fur-seal rookeries on the bleak shores of Antarctica, in and about the Falkland Islands, the Aucklands, South Georgia, and other remote isles, provided a source of exchange almost as profitable as the Northwest: seals were clubbed to death by the millions, their pelts removed and their carcasses left to rot. In 1798 the Yankee skipper Edmund Fanning steered his 93-ton Betsey into Canton Harbor with a cargo of such sealskins. He exchanged them for tea, silk, and other Oriental products, which he sold in New York for more than $120,000. On a total investment of less than $8000 he cleared some $53,000—a profit of 662.5%! Meanwhile, in the same year as the Empress, one of George Cabot's ships carried the first American flag to St. Petersburg in Russia. Salem quickly became the world headquarters for trade in the tiny peppercorn, wanted everywhere in an era before refrigeration: in 1791 the U.S. re-exported less than 500 pounds of it, but fourteen years later the figure was 7,500,000—a 1,500,000% increase. Though not "in trade," New Bedford and Nantucket proved their worth as well, sending out whaling ships that pursued their quarry at mortal risk on voyages lasting as long as three years all over the North Atlantic and the South Pacific.

For the seven decades beginning in 1790 there were few ports on earth where the Yankee sea-trader wasn't a familiar figure. In distant places "Boston" became a synonym for the whole United States. Nothing was too big or too small, too exotic or too commonplace for New England enterprise. By the early 1800's, the region's shipmasters were equally at home fighting a howling gale off Cape Horn, putting down mutinies among their renegade crews, trading beads and bells to the barbarians of the uncharted Northwest Coast for cargoes of sleek pelts (and sometimes beating off their attacks on the side), or exchanging elaborate civilities with the banian in Calcutta, the co-huang and the ranking mandarin in China, all without ever forgetting their native land. Teenage skippers and crews followed the sea to find and better their fortunes, swapping codfish and rum for ivory and chintz, shifting their course and cargo at their own discretion with every fresh trading possibility, pyramiding the profits of a single meandering voyage by constant trading, selling their very ships out from under them if the price was right. In those days, before the West put in its counterappeal, the sea attracted the pick of American manhood. The dream of adventure on salt water and in exotic surroundings lured generation after generation of New England youths from the farm to the forecastle—but they rarely stayed there. Young men starting as common sailors rose, in that explosively expanding trade, to command their own vessels; one Beverly skipper who began as a foremast hand on a ship out of Salem recalled that every one of his mates, in a crew of thirteen, had risen to become a master, and many an ambitious boy did so in his teens or early twenties, gaining prestige and frequently fortune while still young; the next step, to shipowner and eminence and greater wealth, was often taken. Those whom the sea failed to favor with promotion or who didn't favor it after a trial of life on deep water left their place before the mast for new adventures; except on the fishing fleets the "old salt" of European tradition wasn't a usual type of American seafarer. The sea captain had a roving spirit, but he seldom lost his nostalgia for a farm and chickens in the land of his childhood. From his "Captain's Walk" on top of the farmhouse of his ideal retirement he might look back on the wandering ocean, but that ocean never became his home.

Evenings in the Bainsley home were family time, although the "little boys" took no part in it, being all in bed by eight o'clock; the Bainsleys, Everett, and the girls would often play table games—chess, morris, backgammon—or tiddlywinks or occasionally euchre, or they would sit and talk, or sing around the piano (sometimes played by Lydia or Eleanor while Marjorie provided duet accompaniment with her guitar or mandolin), with occasional excursions into blindman's buff or Button, Button, and since someone always seemed to get hungry eventually, they would usually spend some time roasting apples, popping corn, and cracking chestnuts that had been heated up on a shovel. Often Marjorie played concert pieces, introducing Slim to the wild music of Chopin mazurkas and the magical effects of his Nocturnes. Occasionally Lydia and Eleanor would throw a small party for girlfriends and beaux, with dancing, cake and ice cream, and perhaps a taffy pull. Sometimes John Bainsley would tell stories of his and his father's youthful voyages, stories that even his family—which had probably heard them all before—never seemed to tire of, and which Slim found as fascinating as Bainsley had his own descriptions of the West. He told of the West Indies trade and the China trade, of Shanghai for mixed cargoes of pongees and porcelain and matting, camphor and cassia and peculs of ginger, and then on to Sumatra for pepper and Manila for cheroots, and home by way of Honolulu or perhaps the Cape of Good Hope, Rotterdam and Falmouth; of voyages to the East Coast of Africa—Mozambique and Zanzibar, Aden and Muscat—for dates and goatskins and Mocha coffee and unwashed gum copal; of forbidden coasts, like the country called Japan where no man might land until Commodore Perry forced its opening in 1854, and the pure white cone-shaped mountain that seemed to hover in the sky above it, not touching earth at all; of trees that bore bread, and savage men who ate sailors, and flowers that poured out such pollens as to streak the hands with honey; of auroras in the Antarctic, and sandalwood isles whose perfume wafted leagues over the sea; of the snowy, soaring peaks of the Andes, the curious beliefs of the Chinese, the religious ceremonies in the South Pacific Islands; of Rio, where you stood off in the thunder squalls of the night for the morning sea breeze to take you in; of Manila Bay, where the old Spanish fort stood at the mouth of the Pasig, and of running the northeast trades to Brazil and coming up into the southwest passage winds for the Cape of Good Hope—a long reach nearly to Australia and then north again to the Indian Ocean and the southeast trades; of Canton and New Orleans, and of the sight of an East Indiaman in the northeast trades, with the captain on the quarterdeck in a cocked hat and a sword, shoals of flying-fish and albacore skittering about a transom as high and gilded as a church, the royal pennon at the masthead, cannons shining and midshipmen running about, taking in her light sails at sunset as she dropped astern like an island. He had had a fight with a monster seal on the rocky island of St. Paul, off the east coast of Africa, as a young man. He had seen Juan Fernandez, where Robinson Crusoe lived, and Easter Island, the most remote morsel of land in the whole world, with a thousand miles of sea stretching in every direction about it, and yet a series of colossal statues, all with their backs to the sea, circling its barren shore. The inhabitants, a poor little tribe of Polynesians (not even they could tell you how their ancestors had gotten there), knew nothing of these statues, of whence they came or how they were made. He had spent Christmas in all sorts of strange places: off Cape Horn in a gale, running before the trades somewhere a thousand miles off Africa, in a typhoon off the Chinese coast, in the doldrums where the twenty-fifth of December was but twenty-four still hours in a succession of motionless days, in the bitter cold of a winter storm too near the treacherous cliffs of southern Ireland for comfort or security. On one of his whaling voyages he had seen horse-racing in Zanzibar and exotic dances on Tahiti, where they were welcomed by the soldiers of the French fort; had visited Samoa and the islands of Tonga, and seen exotic places of worship, such as dragon-adorned Buddhist temples in Singapore; had called at Lombok, near Java, and visited the harbors at Maui and Honolulu, where whalers often paused—indeed, few who cruised the Pacific failed to stop there. Captains' wives sometimes broke their voyagings there or in the Azores to have their babies, while the ship went on to the northern whaling grounds.

And all that had been nothing to some of his father's exploits. The elder Bainsley, a ten-year-old cabin boy in 1772, had been aboard a Salem trader carrying tea and Colonial exports to Antwerp, and they were declared contraband while the ship was at sea, and seized on the docks; he had been one of a crew blown ashore on Tierra del Fuego in an impenetrable fog, and, barely making Cape Pembroke, obliged to beach their ship, a total loss. On another voyage a Malay proa had hung on their quarter by Formosa, and the captain trained a cannon aft and fired a shot, and she sheered off—"That was on the Amiable Nancy, in '97." One time aboard the Three Sisters he'd even been in a mutiny. It began tamely enough: the ship had been close-hauled, and as the captain was giving an order at the wheel, she fetched a bad lee lurch and sent him in a heap across the deck, to strike his head against the bumkin bitts. He got up dazed but not apparently seriously injured, and the steward swabbed and bound his head and he returned to the poop; but there his conduct proved so peculiar—among other things sending the watch down to put on Sunday rig against a possible hail by the Lord—that, after a long consultation with the second officer (Bainsley Senior, as it happened) and the bo's'n, the first mate took command in the interests of the crew and the owner. The master made some difficulties—Second Officer Bainsley struck up a leveled pistol in his hand just as it went off—and was confined to his cabin under charge of the steward, and in the end the mutiny was upheld by the authorities. Then there was the time the Fortune and Sally struck a coral reef in a bad gale, and the crew took to lifeboats. One swamped; another was picked up five days later by a South American trader and the men carried to India, whence they worked their way home again. A third—Bainsley Senior's own—navigated its way from the Tahiti region to Ceram Island, off New Guinea—halfway across the Pacific.

The Bainsley men were brave and hard-working, but like most reasonably successful businessmen of that day, they always had plenty of time on their hands. Their businesses hadn't yet been demoralized and devoured by the large combinations of capital that were to come later on, and there was room in every field for plenty of firms, so they were generally on peaceful terms with their competitors, and regarded some of them with a kind of approval almost akin to respect. If they were wholesalers or manufacturers they had competent staffs of drummers on the road, their principal customers stuck to them pretty faithfully, and though they gave a great deal of energy to excoriating labor agitators, most had very little labor in their own establishments. They were likely to know their workers as people, and could trust them, and especially their foremen, to keep things moving without constant supervision. If they worked close enough to home to permit it, they went home to dinner at twelve or one o'clock, and invariably took a half-hour nap before returning to the office. Having seen to most of their actual business during the morning, they would spend the afternoon reading trade and sporting periodicals, searching out the ratings of prospective customers in the Bradstreet book, concocting hoaxes and practical jokes, or gossiping with their partners, their bookkeepers, or any caller who happened to drift in—or, in John Bainsley's current case, working on Sanitary Commission projects such as the forthcoming Fair, exchanging notes by messenger boys on little ponies with other members of the Brooklyn chapter's governing board and with the female volunteers and contributors who made its success possible. If there were a baseball game in hand they would go to it; if the team were playing away they would go down to the local oyster house to learn the score. At five-thirty—no later, and sometimes earlier—they knocked off for the day.

Not until now had Slim realized that the differences between the upper and middle classes were created more by the latter than the former. Especially now, with the frantic prosperity (and inflation) of the war, many of the middle had not long before been members of the working class, and they cherished the certainty of Victorian morality, which emphasized appearances, family values, and the "gospel of success." They were, in fact, very similar to their counterparts in England, who worked hard at regarding those below them with proper disdain, but for whom the apprehensions of the lower-paid ones particularly—higher-echelon factory workers, clerks, bookkeepers, mail carriers—over dropping back into the proletariat were very real, which was one reason so many of them were almost comically insistent on bourgeois formal manners and bourgeois ethical standards for their children: they were "respectable people," not proletarians. It was they who created the conventions of the age, forged its values, and lived by them: aspiring to upward mobility, yet desperate not to slip backward in status, they sought to distance themselves from the street vendors, miners, domestics, ironworkers, and most factory and farm laborers. Many believed that a solemn and moralistic outlook was pleasing to God, the sovereign, and any aristocrat they might happen to meet. Respectability became a fetish with them, and so entangled with religious observance that it was hard to say where genuine piety ended and a wish to stand well in the eyes of their fellows—and their betters—began. To this end many gave up relatively innocent pastimes such as dancing, card-playing, and the theater, all of which the aristocracy indulged in, and became pious, intolerant, and overprotective of wives and daughters. American ones did very much the same thing, leaving a more realistic character to the uppers, such as the Bainsleys.

Since his hosts were, as Everett had observed on Sunday, usually absorbed in their own affairs during the day, Slim found that those hours were his own to do with as he liked. After breakfast, while Mr. Bainsley set off for the shipyard and his wife headed upstairs to their bedroom—the office from which the house was run, where she had her desk, made up the menus, wrote her notes, and paid her bills, where the cook came for her instructions in the morning—he would settle down in the library and read until a maid came to summon him to the day-nursery (which was also the schoolroom) at the fourth-floor front of the house. Here were marbles and tops, regiments of tin soldiers, toy guns and swords and drums, tin trumpets, bows and arrows, toy trains, sturdy iron fire engines and stagecoaches and horse-drawn trolleys with teams on little wheels, ship models, hoops and kites, jumping jacks, diavolos, blunt scissors for cutting up old magazines, corncob pipes to blow soap-bubbles with, a paintbox and easel, butterfly nets, a telescope, sleds, balls and bats, shinny sticks, a kaleidoscope, a huge rocking horse, blocks, roller skates and ice skates, a Noah's Ark, jackstraws, toy animals, building bricks, puppets and a puppet theater, a set of tenpins in their own wooden box, a shelf of packaged games, a toy grocery store, a wooden circus set, a set of building logs that looked very much like the kind you might see a ranchhouse built from, gaily colored and decorated Ives clockwork toys with exceptionally strong movements that could run for thirty minutes or more on a winding. Here too were books, wall maps of the United States and the world, a two-by-four-foot blackboard, a music box with interchangeable cylinders, a stereoscope and collection of views; good solar lamps, old, but economical and highly efficient; often Marjorie Herrington's guitar or mandolin (sometimes both), gymnastic equipment—dumbbells, weights, beanbags, Indian clubs—so that exercise might be worked into the day no matter how wretched the weather, three separate captain's chairs, and individual lift-top desks with storage space underneath and two side legs of openwork iron—the kind that had come to be associated with schoolhouses all over the country. Here was a comfortable padded rocking chair in which Marjorie could sit sewing or reading while her charges played quietly, a cushiony Chesterfield sofa covered in crimson plush with ends adjustable at any angle for use as an impromptu bed for naptime or a comfortable seat for reading, a yard-wide tilt-top table set about with East Indian wicker chairs for meals, an old Brewster & Ingrahams eight-day brass clock in a zebra-wood case, a Franklin stove fitted into the fireplace (which was framed in ordinary painted wood) with an open front to allow a full view of the cheerful fire, a multicolored hooked rug covering most of the floor, and a delightfully whimsical wallpaper with a motif repeating all around the room—a group of English peasants wearing Italian hats, dancing on a lawn that abruptly gave way to a sea beach, where a corpulent fisherman was hauling in what appeared to be a small whale, while a dreadful naval combat took place just beyond the end of his pole. On the walls hung engravings of Columbus Before Ferdinand and Isabella, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and Shakespeare and His Friends, lithographs of Washington, Lafayette, and the signing of the Declaration from John Trumbull's painting, a picture of Solomon's temple and one of the young Samuel at prayer, and watercolors of two of the seagoing vessels that had helped to found and maintain the family's fortune: the Gypsy Maid running through the northeast trades with royals and all her weather studding sails set, and the Brooklyn in heavy weather off the Cape of Good Hope, being driven hard across the Agulhas Bank under double-reefed topsails, reefed courses, the fore-topmast staysail and spanker, with the westerly current breaking in an ugly cross sea, but setting the ship thirty or forty miles to windward in a day. Heavy green rep curtains hung from gilt lambrequin frames at the windows, to seal out drafts on the worst days, but were drawn aside whenever the weather was sunny. It was, Slim granted privately, not an unpleasant place for small boys to spend most of their lives.

With her very small class and total autonomy, Marjorie seldom needed to allot more than a couple of hours a day to instruction. The boys were polite and well-behaved—and, more important, fascinated by everything Slim had to say about the West. Using the map as necessary and making rough sketches on the blackboard, he talked about the trails that led there and the wagon trains that followed them, the country over which they passed, the Santa Fe trade, the Pony Express, wild animals, the cattle business, Indians, Mexico, brands, stagecoaches, mining, the Army and its forts, almost anything that came to mind, rambling freely from one subject to another as the boys' questions led him. Most days Everett and his tutor joined them, the boy having somehow convinced Mr. Schoenfeld that he too should learn something of the frontier. Schoenfeld's father had been an English-born but German-educated German Jew, who as a young man had migrated to New Orleans, where he established a brokerage business. There he took a wife who had been born in France of a French Catholic father—a doctor—and a Dutch Jewish mother, and brought up in the former's faith; when she was very small the family had moved to Haiti and become prominent in the local Creole society before refugeeing from the slave uprisings. Their children were brought up in Creole New Orleans and raised as Catholics, and Scheonfeld had been educated in Paris. Like most cosmopolitan people, he was inclined to be tolerant, and as a scholar he was always interested in new fields of knowledge. Like Marjorie, he had a good deal of autonomy and flexibility and didn't seem to mind having Slim's lessons cut into his time with Everett, whom he instructed in Latin, French, algebra, geography, history, Greek mythology, and the botany and natural history of the region; three days a week, in the afternoon, the boy went to a fencing-master who kept a salon on Atlantic Avenue. "You are a natural teacher, Mr. Sherman," Schoenfeld said, very early on. "Harvard or Yale—or perhaps West Point—lost an exemplary professor when your parents took you West."

Slim shook his head. "I'm a cattleman, Mr. Schoenfeld, a rancher. It's all I've ever really wanted to be, and all I want to be again once the war ends and I can go home."

His own opinion was that Marjorie would have made at least as "exemplary" a teacher as himself; often he stayed on to listen to her imaginative reading of poetry and teaching of history and geography. She made everything alive, colorful, and interesting; anything she explained gained in reality and vividness. She had read widely, and heard many stories from an uncle (her mother's brother) who was an officer on a merchantman. Her geography lessons frequently ended in stories, often of Irish kings, heroes, and saints. One was of two monks crossing the sea in a little boat, and one of them had a cat in his arms. "Why?" asked John Jr. "Because the cat was his friend," said Marjorie. Another time she told about Mohammed and how once when his cat was asleep on his sleeve and he wanted to go somewhere, he cut the sleeve off rather than wake her up. She told the boys of the discovery of the New World, the conquest of India, the life of trappers in Canada, the customs of the Chinese and of the Negroes in Africa, the coming of the Spaniards to South America, the history of tea, coffee, potatoes, tobacco, vines, spices, silkworms—all in a most compelling and interesting manner. She knew about other countries—pyramids and castles and cathedrals, lions and tigers; about long-ago times and the kind of poetry that made even Slim ache with pleasure. One day when he had been telling about the Chinese who flocked to California in '49—"they called it 'Gold Mountain,' " he said—she took off from that to talk about the rice that was the Chinese staff of life. She had a big drawing-book open on the table, and said, "You know rice comes from India and China. And here is a rice field." With rapid strokes she made a sketch of it, telling them how rice grew and was harvested, washed, and dried. She could tell all about the rulers of England, from Egbert in 827 to Queen Victoria, and about all the Presidents from Washington to Lincoln, and the French Revolution; about Sir Francis Drake, Magellan and Morgan and Exquemelin, Captain Cook; and about the British "sea-dogs" like the one who spoke his last words on the deck of the Spanish ship San Felipe: "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, having ended my life like a true soldier that has fought for his country, his queen, his religion and his honor." One morning she talked exclusively of Medieval times, a world of fairies and queens and kings and castles and high bridges, turreted castles and canopied beds and beautiful cornflower-blue dresses, princesses and dragons and brave knights fighting for the Church and their ladies, going on crusade to capture the Holy Land from the Turks and Saracens, coming back with jewelled swords and silken cloth, with tales of spices and Syrian fruits, elephants and Greek palaces and Arabian horses, and trying, if not always successfully, to be just, courteous, and kind. From there, in succeeding lessons, she went on naturally to fourteenth-century Italy, beginning to blossom with tall cathedrals, statues in bronze and marble, bright paintings, music, ships with colored sails bound for Greece and Arabia and India, and in its shops hand-lettered books with initials and borders of red and blue and gold, bearing the names of Cicero, Virgil, Boethius, Statius, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio; of the silks and spices that started out from Java, Sumatra, and the Moluccas, and how they were unloaded at Bushire, Basra, or Bunder Abbas and put on riverboats that carried them to Baghdad or Mosul. Thence they were shipped again to Smyrna, Alexandria, or Alexandretta, on the shores of the Mediterranean. From there ships took them to Venice, Genoa, Marseilles, or Barcelona; and from there, caravans took them overland to Vienna, Paris, Milan, and the other great cities of Europe. "You can scarcely wonder," she said, "that after so many transfers and so much distance, they cost so much that only kings and nobles could afford to buy them!"—which struck him as a very compact and comprehensive lesson in economics. She told of the days of Queen Elizabeth, when merchants were sending ships to the bazaars of India and the markets of Marco Polo's China, pushing through ice to Russian Archangel, hunting whales for precious oil and ambergris, pillaging off the Barbary Coast; when sea captains were bringing home new riches looted from Spanish galleons, and the gallants of the court were tasting new delights like tobacco from America and spices and fineries from the Far East; when eager mobs gathered to gaze at the bloody sport of bear-baiting, or thronged to a hanging or a beheading; when through the muddy, ill-drained streets of London splashed splendidly appointed horses, and processions of cooks and pastrymen went following trumpeters, bearing roasts and pies to York House or Somerset House or Durham Palace—gabled, many-turreted piles with colored oriel windows and blazoned coats of arms and statuary and Italian gardens behind their walls. The city was thronged with gentlemen and sailors, eloquent preachers and severe scholars, some of them talking of the mystery of life, of Ovid and Euripides, some gossiping of cities of gold and fountains of eternal youth, some discussing superstitions and sciences, holiness and damnation and gay Italian romance. All these times, she said, had one great thing in common: they were times of many perils. Wild beasts killed the sheep and cattle; robbers lurked in the woods to attack passing travellers; bad neighbors might quarrel with you or steal from you; the great nobles fought each other, and kings fought kings; and there were pirates at sea, and to the south the infidel Turks and Arabs. So heroes were very important, because bravery and strength and good faith meant saving men's homes and lives. Each town and province and country gloried in its champions, and there was nothing finer a boy could dream of than becoming a great knight. Those who could read took pleasure and lessons from poems that taught people how to live nobly, how to be courageous and faithful to friends, how to die for Christ or their king, and that told the deeds of mighty warriors like Aeneas and his great-grandson Baron Brut, Brutus who drove the Tarquin from Rome, and even noble enemies like Saladin; of the "Nine Worthies of Christendom," Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander the Great, "falcon-eyed" Julius Caesar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godefroy deBouillon; and of the Seven Champions, the patron saints of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Italy, and Spain—George, Andrew, Patrick, David, Denis, Francis of Assisi, and James the Greater, known as Santiago de España. And from there, as a natural consequence, she went on to read aloud Tennyson's poems of the nobility of Arthur and the sad love story of Lancelot and Guenevere, the great friendship of Roland and Oliver, and parts of The Faerie Queene, which described a land filled with adventure, magic, and monsters, where a loyal knight served the queen of all fairies and elves, and various knights, each representing one of the virtues enumerated by Aristotle, went forth to do adventures in which shone the wisdom and moral philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the religious fervor of Christianity, the bravery and faith of chivalry, the love of lovely color and form and sound that had revived with the Renaissance. Like Orlando Furioso, it was full of moral teaching and gorgeous knights and strange adventures, with the golden clang of knightly combat and the embroidered beauty of description, with its moral lessons, woven in a massive tapestry of allegory and symbol, peeking out from behind them. It was strong meat for little boys, with its great bulk and slow music, its dignity like a gorgeous cathedral towering over a town, but it also had its ideal of modesty and purity, and its virtuous point of view (fresh and rare in its day), which pleased sober-minded men, and went well with Victorianism. She read from the Orlando too, tales of adventure, love, chivalry, and fantasy, so beautifully and entertainingly told, and said that if she ever had a little girl, she meant to name her after the heroine Melissa, whose spells freed heroes from the nonhuman forms set upon them by the sorceress Alcina. She told too of Robin Hood, the greatest outlaw of his part of England, beloved by the people of Nottingham, living deep in Sherwood Forest with his merry men, shooting the King's deer for their suppers and making some mischief for the poor sheriff; of his uncanny skill with the yew bow, his love of diguise, his courage and his humor. She gave drawing and water-color lessons, too, and arithmetic and geology. She was as much unlike Slim's boyhood schoolma'am as anyone could be. Miss Coates (nobody ever called her Miss Rachel) had been a tall, gaunt, hard-voiced woman, a no-nonsense sort of teacher whom all the big boys respected. They never argued with her or sassed her back, even though she whipped with a switch only on Fridays. He remembered the time the Fossnaugh boys put a green snake in her lunch pail and the girls were screaming and jumping up on their desks and covering their eyes. Only the older town girls, though; the farm girls and the little girls didn't scream at all—they were just as interested in studying the varmint as the boys. It was only the girls practicing to be young ladies who went berserk and threatened to expire. As for Miss Coates, she put her hand right in, quick as the snake itself, and got hold of it by the neck and flung it out the window. Slim had been only eight then, but his respect for her had soared to the level of the bigger boys' after that incident. His mother couldn't be beat in the ladylike department, but he never once knew her to go silly over a snake, or a mouse either. When she saw a mouse, she just got a broom and chased it back to its hole. He'd bet that Marjorie would be the same way, she seemed so down-to-earth, and yet at the same time so full of the love of romance and beauty. Ma would love this girl, he thought, and Pa too, the way she can make school subjects so clear and interesting and—and relevant. He found himself thinking more seriously about what it might mean to take her home to Wyoming after the war. They could crate her things up and send them over to Jersey City by dray and have them put on the train for St. Joseph, and there they could be held in the warehouse that one of Pa's old Santa Fe partners had built for the outfitting business he'd started, till Slim could arrange to put them on a freight caravan for Fort Laramie or Fort Halleck; and once they got there, he or his father could drive their own big wagon over to get them. Jonesy and Andy could move into the big bunkroom, and he and Marjorie could have the little second bedroom till he and Pa could run up a bigger and better one next door to his parents'. She could help Ma give Andy his lessons and do the sewing and look after the chickens—he admitted to himself that he didn't know yet whether she could cook, but certainly Ma and Jonesy could teach her if not.

Schoenfeld would usually join the family for noon dinner, then escort Everett to the fencing studio (if it was a day for that) on his way to his next pupil's home; Declan MacAlister and his cab had standing orders to meet the boy and bring him home afterward, and on his pocket-money day he'd do a little shopping before they got there. Afternoons Slim and Quentin, who had revised the arrangement about "their" horses at the Hunts Lane stable, would go for a ride if the weather allowed, and most days would end up at the gymnasium on Atlantic Avenue, where Slim got some lessons in scientific boxing and even took a stab or two at fencing, though he discovered he wasn't light enough on his feet to be really effective at it. Sometimes they would meet Mr. Bainsley at his club afterward and enjoy a round of billiards or perhaps a few hands of cards with his gentleman cronies—doctors, lawyers, merchants, journalists, professors, industrialists, liberal ministers.

Slim could readily see why Quentin was so fond of this family. He liked and respected John and Alice Bainsley himself, and was convinced his parents would do the same, if only the two couples could ever have occasion to meet. The boys made him think longingly of Andy and of what their relationship might be one day. Lydia and Eleanor, having apparently agreed not to compete with each other for a man who was not only a friend of their favorite cousin but a guest in their house, behaved toward him like the sisters he'd never had, with just a little fillip of teasing and flirting to keep their hands in. But it took him only a few days to know that he could never live in Brooklyn or any city like it. He was too much a product of farmland and range and mountain, too used to clean winds and broad vistas and silences that could sometimes be almost deafening. The ringing clatter of shod hooves on pavement, the sustained echoing rattle of harness, the way every sound rebounded from the brick walls on every side, grated on his nerves; the crowded skyline and the close-packed ranks of rowhouses shoulder-to-shoulder made him feel hemmed in—an Army camp was crowded too, but at least the tallest things around, except for the occasional flagpole, were the supply wagons with their eleven-foot peaks. He was very glad that the bedroom where he and Quentin slept was at the back of the house, overlooking the yard, and blocked off from the street noises by the bulk of the building; the only thing that occasionally disturbed him at night was the yowl of a prowling cat or the barking of a suddenly roused dog.

Several evenings a week the family blossomed out socially in their guest's honor and tried to give him a good time. Tickets for The Bohemian Girl had been secured for Thursday night, and though the weather was bitter cold, the Academy of Music was literally just a few blocks from the Bainsley house, at 176-194 Montague Street. It was a three-storey building in a Mediterranean style, with many windows, mostly of the pointed-arch variety, in the façade, a large theater seating 2200, a smaller concert hall, dressing and chorus rooms (the former still somewhat unusual in theaters of the day), and a vast "baronial" kitchen. It had opened as recently as 1861, and though there was some opposition to theater groups' using it—theater being (at least to some) less morally uplifting than the symphony or the opera—it had quickly become a regular stop for touring acting companies, including the Booths, both Edwin and John Wilkes. It was the grandest building Slim had ever been in, with its velvet-draperied boxes, white-and-gold woodwork, crimson wallpaper, and airy central cut-glass chandelier. Like all the better theaters over the last twenty years or so, it had a gas table, or control board, which provided unified, coordinated control of the intensity of stage lighting from a single source, making it possible for technicians to achieve effects such as rising and setting suns and moonlight more easily and with greater realism than ever before, and for colored glass mantles to be placed over the lamps to alter moods for individual scenes, which could even be "faded" in and out. It also had the Drummond, or "lime," light, which had come in around the same time—an intense light achieved by heating a cylinder of lime to incandescence within a metal box fitted with a lens—and had provided the first high-intensity directional illumination, allowing actors to be picked out onstage by a halo of bright, white light, directed from a perch above the heads of the audience. It presented amateur and professional music and theater productions and was one of the most popular venues in the city.

English-language opera—whether written in that language or translated to it after the fact—had been around for over two hundred years, and indeed until the late '40's French and Italian opera had been but rarely performed in their original languages in England or the United States. Henry Purcell had turned out four examples—Dido and Aeneas, King Arthur, The Prophetess, and The Fairy Queen, all in a mixed form that depended on music, dancing, and spoken dialogue, without recitative. English-language versions of operas by Philidor and Rousseau had been given early on. By 1810 the type had hit its stride, and over the following quarter-century the most popular examples were Thomas Arne's Artaxerxes and Love in a Village, Samuel Arnold's The Castle of Andalusia, Charles Dibdin's Lionel and Clarissa, Thomas Liney's The Duenna, William Shield's Robin Hood, The Farmer, and The Poor Soldier, and Stephen Storace's The Haunted Tower. Other favorites were The Devil's Bridge, Guy Mannering, Lochinvar, Night Hand, and No Song, No Supper. Americans tried their hands at opera composition too: Alexander Reinagle, an Englishman who immigrated to Philadelphia at the age of thirty, just after the Revolution, wrote Robin Hood, The Spanish Barbers, The Volunteers, Auld Robin Gray, and The Travellers; Benjamin Carr produced The Archers, an early version of the legend of William Tell; Raynor Taylor offered such titles as Buxom Joan, May Day, and The Rose of Aragon; and John Howard Payne's Clari, Maid of Orleans, first seen in 1823, was a great hit. In the '30's Charles E. Horn composed several, most notably The Maid of Saxony and Ahmed al Kamel, or The Pilgrim of Love, based upon Irving's Alhambra; earlier he had created Circe. Rossini's La Cerentola, first performed in America in 1826, had won popularity only when it was offered in Michael Rophino Lacy's translation, Cinderella; or, the Fairy-Queen and the Glass Slipper, five years later, and played more than fifty performances in its first season alone, remaining a regular feature of the repertory for decades. Don Giovanni was Englished as The Libertine. La Sonnambula and Norma, The Daughter of the Regiment and Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto and La Traviata, Fra Diavolo and The Marriage of Figaro, Donizetti's Anne Boleyn, all had been presented in English before the outbreak of the war, and all won great popularity and frequent financial success. But perhaps the favorite composer of the type was the Irishman Michael William Balfe. He had turned out no less than thirty-four operas to date, the latest two—The Armorer of Nantes and Blanche de Nevers—having been first presented only last year, venturing into English for the first time with The Siege of Rochelle in 1835, and following it with The Maid of Artois two years later and another twenty-two after that, besides the ones in French and Italian. His Bohemian Girl was an opera Americans had honestly liked from their first discovery of it. Its New York premiere had taken place nearly twenty years ago, on November 25, 1844, but its songs were familiar to them long before that, thanks to a year's London run. It was a smashing success: it ran for at least twenty days, gave way to previously scheduled Christmas engagements, and returned in January for twenty-two consecutive performances, then moved to new quarters all through February and into March—and this at a time when a single theater might present more than a hundred different plays in one season, and the bill changed almost every night: when Forrest played Macbeth twenty consecutive nights in New York in 1853, it was a phenomenal record. It had early become an infallible standby for travelling companies, among whom it was said, "When business is bad, give The Bohemian Girl and fill your purse," and they would still be giving it in the '80's. It had a rather melodramatic plot, being the story of Arline, the young daughter of an Austrian count, who had been kidnapped by gypsies in childhood and raised as one of their own. Years later she fell in love with Thaddeus, a member of the tribe, who ultimately revealed that he was an exiled Polish aristocrat, and therefore worthy of asking for her hand when she was reunited with her father. But the gypsy queen was also in love with him, stalked him to the Count's castle, and tried to break in through a window to kill her and kidnap Thaddeus, in which design she was foiled only because Thaddeus's gypsy friend Devilshoof followed her and attempted to wrest the weapon from her hands; it went off accidentally, and she was killed, leaving Arline and Thaddeus free of her threat. But it was a tuneful presentation with no less than twenty-two musical numbers, including two—"You'll Remember Me" and "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls"—that had become popular standards, not to speak of "Up With the Banner, and Down With the Slave" and " 'T'is Sad to Leave Our Fatherland," which resonated nicely with patriotic American audiences. Best of all, it was in English, so an ordinary American could understand what was going on.

Sitting on a red-plush-covered chair in the box Bainsley had reserved for his party—one of two tiers of them—with Marjorie to his right, Mr. and Mrs. Bainsley on her other side, and Quentin and his cousins beyond, Slim kept sneaking little sidewise looks at her, watching her rapt expression as she gazed at the stage. Apart from when she was teaching, it was the first time he had seen anything of her real self; usually among other adults she kept her face neutral at best. He wondered why. She'd said she liked her work, her position, the family; had said she trusted them. She wore a very low-cut apricot-colored silk in which she somehow contrived to look modest, although of course it was the prevailing style for evening gowns, with a lace scarf over her shoulders and a delicate seed-pearl parure that had been her mother's—a necklace of five pearl roses, a pair of bracelets, rosette earrings, an oval brooch, and a branch-shaped pin. There was a wreath of white flowers bracketed over her head behind her ears. But she still kept her hair bundled into a net, even though it was an evening one of Solferino chenille, delicately knotted in a diamond pattern, shimmering with crystal beads and trimmed with a scatter of gold and coral ones. He found himself wondering how long it really was, how it would look if she let it fall free, or whip in the prairie winds.

The next morning, instead of the usual discreet tap at the guest-room door that announced the delivery of the bucket of coals for the fireplace, Slim and Quentin were roused by an insistent scratching. A lifetime of getting up at five, five-thirty, or—at the very latest, for winter reveille—six had made it impossible for Slim to stay asleep much later; he'd doze off and on till Quentin got up, but he was awake enough to know that this was out of the ordinary. "What's that?" he asked.

"I'll check," said Quentin. "No, you stay put. I've got a dressing gown, and you haven't." That was true; Slim had never even owned one—in his circles, you kept your clothes on till you went to bed, and put them on again immediately upon getting up—while Quentin had left a loose black silk one here when he left for the front. "Coming," he called toward the unknown scratcher, and threw back the quilted comforter.

No sooner had he opened the door than Mary Catherine, the under-housemaid, eeled in from the hall. "Oh, Mister Quentin, 't'is Herself—taken dreadful she is with one of her headaches. Himself wants everyone to keep as quiet and still as ever they can, and he says especial for you gentlemen to use the bathroom upstairs."

Slim, lying on his side, pushed up in bed. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Nay, Mister Slim, 't'is little enough anyone can do. 'T'will go away, with rest and time, but quiet and darkness she must have. The doctor gave her powders for it, and if they be not enow there's the blue bottle—" Slim guessed she meant laudanum, since he knew it came in one— "though 't'is little joy she has for takin' of it."

That Slim didn't find surprising: after all these months at war he knew that you could become addicted to the opiate without very much effort at all. He and Quentin went about their early routine with as little sound as they could manage, and headed down to the dining room.

At breakfast Lydia and Eleanor were in what Slim's mother would have called "a state." It seemed that there was an important dance in New York in less than two weeks, the seamstress had already been engaged to come in beginning the very next day, and their mother had promised them a trip to A. T. Stewart's today to choose fabrics and trims for their new gowns. Since unmarried ladies, unlike married ones, could never "walk alone," they couldn't go in by themselves, and their father, although he could safely have left the shipyard in the MacCaigs' capable hands for a day if necessary, was very busy with the preparations for the Sanitary Fair, which were coming rapidly to a boil: he had a meeting scheduled this morning with the contractor who was putting up the temporary buildings, and one this afternoon with the other gentlemen of the board and the principal lady volunteers. "Of course we know how Mama suffers," Eleanor said, "but, Papa, we must go to Stewart's! Even if she's well in the morning, it sometimes takes her another full day to recover, and there'll be no chance on Monday, with the party to get ready for, and you'll end up paying Miss Humphries for at least three days when she won't be working, and we may not have our gowns done in time."

"We can take them, Uncle John," Quentin offered. "I've been wanting a good excuse to show Slim something of Manhattan anyway; he only got a little look at it from the cab when we crossed from one ferry-slip to the other."

Bainsley relaxed immediately. "My boy, you're a lifesaver. I'll take the boys with me so your aunt can have quiet; they always love to visit the yard, and the Fair buildings should fascinate them. Take the carriage; I'm sure there'll be all sorts of parcels to bring home."

Slim had learned, somewhat to his surprise, that while in small towns and the country it was quite correct for a young man to "walk a girl home" after church, singing school, a lyceum lecture, or just about any other function short of a funeral—or even to take her buggy-riding, just the two of them, as long as he'd already established himself as a serious suitor—"polite society" in the city saw the matter very differently. In general, before the war, the slightest physical contact between the sexes had been considered something to be avoided: a lady's reputation would have been gravely compromised if she accepted the arm of any gentleman but her husband or a relative, and a single girl could show herself with a gentleman only if he were a relation or "of respectable age." Girls were taught to avoid physical contact with men—not to be lifted in and out of carriages or on and off horses, not to sit together "in a place that is too narrow," not even to read out of the same book or "place your head close to another person's" in order to get a better look at something; unless absolutely necessary, they must never permit anyone to help them on with coats, shawls, overshoes, or anything else. The etiquette books warned them that any man was potentially dangerous who had not "passed his grand climacteric." Even when dancing, couples held each other by one hand, and the woman placed the other on her waist, while the man waved his over his head or hers, or rested it on his person. But this, like the rituals of courtship, had been to some extent overturned by the exigencies of the war, which was why Marjorie, though without doubt a "lady," had accepted his offer to escort her after church—and why she'd hesitated, that almost imperceptible moment, before she did. All the same, it made him feel both honored and trusted that Bainsley would make no objection to the notion of placing his daughters at least partly under the guest's protection—and also gave him some hope that he would be accepted if he asked for Marjorie's hand, since even though she wasn't technically a daughter of the house, she was treated very much like one.

The "carriage" was in fact a clarence, one of the most expensive private vehicles to be had, costing $1700 to $2000 depending on decoration; it could accommodate two people (or a man and two children) on the driver's seat, two or three on each of the facing inside ones, and had a semi-circular glass front so the people riding inside could get a better view of the passing scenery. Slim and Quentin agreed that Quentin would go to the stable on Hunts Lane to fetch it, but Slim would drive it in and Quentin would take over for the return trip.

The frantic party season, which preceded Christmas, was over, but Broadway as a shopping destination was still the mecca for Brooklyn ladies, and the ferry was crowded with their vehicles—everything from chaises, cabriolets, and buggies for married women going alone or in pairs, to three-seated mountain wagons and eight-passenger wagonettes for large parties of friends, some driven by hired coachmen. Once off the boat, these joined a congested stream of horse-drawn traffic—streetcars and omnibuses, dumpcarts, dray carts, piano trucks, business carts, bakers' carts, parcel-delivery carts, brewers' trucks, hearses and undertakers' flower wagons, veterinary ambulances, lunch wagons, coal and ice wagons, farm wagons down from the upper regions of the island or over from Brooklyn and Queens, glass and lumber and furniture trucks, express wagons, cabs, police patrol wagons, mail-collectors' carts, butchers' wagons, moving vans, and a dazzling array of delivery wagons, with an occasional fire engine, including the new two- and four-horse steam pumpers, dashing noisily and heroically off to fight a blaze somewhere. The Bainsley horses, who were of course quite accustomed to city traffic, were less troubled by it than their driver: Slim could readily see why, even twenty years ago and more, it had been said that the attempt to get across Broadway was as much as a pedestrian's life was worth. And the cold of January in New York City was almost as bad in its way as that of Wyoming: the closeness of the Bay and the two rivers made the air damp, which deepened the chill of the air, and the wind swept over the island of Manhattan with a fury known only to the steppes of Russia.

By the time they got over the ferry, most men were either at their businesses or tucked away in their clubs, and apart from the ubiquitous street vendors, the foot traffic was dominated by women and children. Hoopskirts had definitely won the day by the season of 1862-3, and rich taffetas and glacé silks kept them in full sail. Like the crinolines from which they had evolved, they were a provocative if cumbersome item which yet concealed a multitude of bulges and figure flaws and made a deep secret of coming maternity—indeed, the crinoline had originally been created to conceal the fact that the Empress Eugénie was pregnant. They blocked traffic, kept men at a distance, and went off at alarming tilts that gave sudden vistas of frills and legs. At times they deadlocked their wearers in the midst of luggage and packages. They earned shots from the cartoonists and were difficult to manage when skipping the gutters and crossing under the horses' hooves in the dust at Saratoga or promenading through the muddy mess that was a winter day in New York; the problems of learning how to dance with grace, sit down with propriety, board a train in safety, and climb into a carriage without mishap while wearing one were, to say the least, daunting. But they had one great selling point: they had freed women from the martyrdom of a heavy weight of underskirts. Mme. Demorest's small Quaker hoop skirt—the kind Marjorie Herrington preferred except in the most formal of circumstances, such as the theater—had achieved immense popularity and distribution: it was neat and graceful, took up little room, and seemed to assist locomotion rather than impeding it. It was also inexpensive—twelve hoops for a dollar. Some ladies preferred "mannish costumes" which looked entirely conventional in their cut and decoration except for the fact that the hem ended five or six inches off the ground, offering a view of high-heeled walking boots and perhaps even a dash of stocking; these had the great utility of not dragging their hems in the dirt and slush, which made them particularly attractive to the "government girls" and other working females—a tribe grown notably numerous with the absence of so many male breadwinners at the front—who had to get on and off public conveyances and work even if their skirts and petticoats were soaked by rain.

There was, of course, a great demand for mourning veils (long and heavy, unless made of lisse) and yard goods in black; bombazine had gradually given way to French merino, cashmere, alpaca, and rep cloth, besides marceline silk and grenadine for summer wear. By 1862 the mourning cloak with passementerie and jet trimming had become ubiquitous. For the first month after the funeral, a widow was expected to remain at home, except to go to church; for the next eleven she could go out without social censure, but could "accept no invitations" or be seen in "places of public resort," and attendance at celebrations and other explicitly pleasurable occasions was considered in poor taste. This made shopping—if not for items of dress for either herself or her children (who were of course in mourning too, though only for a year, as opposed to the two and a half years minimum expected for the bereaved wife), at least for household goods, groceries, books, and what have you—both permissible and one of her few opportunities to get out in public, and the sidewalks were dotted with figures in "deep mourning," "ordinary mourning," and "half mourning," the six-month succession of print or solid dresses in shades of sober colors like purple, violet, lilac, lavender, mauve, and gray, or black/gray/white stripes, with a bit of ruching at neck and wrists, that concluded the period of public display of grief.

Among those not in mourning, the military influence was strong for both women and children. Youngsters wore Zouave caps, jackets, and suits, sailor suits, and Garibaldi suits of cassimere, with occasional small-boy excursions into Highland dress (complete with velvet bonnet), while their mothers donned Zouave vests with crinolines, Burnside riding habits, Saratoga hats and Russian paletots. Large skirts and full sleeves required voluminous outerwear—shawls, capes, cloaks, burnouses—varied by an occasional fitted pelisse covering all but the bottom eight or nine inches of the skirt. The coachman cape and the Galway were seen everywhere. Balmoral skirts were popular, as were talmas, cardinals, and hoods. Military braid, tassels, buttons and medallions reflected the look of parading regiments. And in spite of all the talk of austerity, luxury items flourished. Tiny bonnets with sloping crowns and diminutive curtains sold for $40 to $70, and it was observed that one would hardly know there was a war on for the sight of women in superbly embroidered amber velvet carriage cloaks sweeping into Tiffany's to buy emerald necklaces and gold hair-combs. Frivolous bonnets of white or black sprigged lace were a persistent fashion, and women wore French lace capes as evening wraps. But by the summer of '63 the dashing cloaks and mantles had begun to give way to the English paletot, or short sacque, as wartime dress became more utilitarian. Hair bracelets were a fad and long mousquetaire gloves were worn both day and evening.

R. H. Macy had opened his first department store a little over five years ago, on October 28, 1858, on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, which was far north of where other dry-goods stores were at the time. The following year, Lord & Taylor, originally founded in 1826 and located on Catherine Street, opened a new store, their most magnificent yet, at Broadway and Grand Street; with its steam elevators and Tiffany chandeliers, it was said to look "more like an Italian palace than a place for the sale of broadcloth." But the king of the city's dry-goods merchants was A. T. Stewart. In 1846 he had expanded his business into a series of shops called the Marble Dry-Goods Palace, which covered an entire block at Broadway and Chambers Street. Five storeys high, the complex had a heavy cornice and a row of Corinthian columns on the ground floor interspersed with plate-glass show windows, six by eleven feet, which Philip Hone decried as something a boy's marble or snowball could shatter. It immediately became the shopping mecca of the city's well-to-do families. Sixteen years later, Stewart moved into the new store he had commissioned in '59. Known as Stewart's Cast Iron Palace, it too was five storeys high, and stood on a twenty-acre site, bounded by Ninth and Tenth Streets, Broadway, and Fourth Avenue, which made it the most centrally located of the three. Its iron façade was a series of flattened arcades one above another, filled with glass, with the simplest of horizontal bands between floors and a quoinlike vertical strip at each corner. It had hydraulic elevators for ladies who wanted to avoid climbing the grand staircase, and a rotunda soaring from the first floor to the roof, allowing shoppers on the upper floors to peer down upon the action below. It was open twelve hours a day, seven to seven, and "door boys" opened the heavy doors and checked the patrons' umbrellas in stormy weather. The wide aisles were promenades where women could shop and meet with friends, the ladies' room on the second floor a place for rest and refreshment. Fifth Avenue, which had become the most fashionable residential street in the city, began on the uptown side of Washington Square Park and drove northward from there, ruler-straight, crossing Broadway at 23rd, and therefore placing the best department stores close to their patrons' neighborhood.

Since it was considered necessary for a man to carry anything and everything for the lady he was with, however light in weight or feminine in appearance the bundle might be, Slim and Quentin left the carriage tied up outside and went into Stewart's with the three girls—for of course Marjorie had come too, being expected to be properly prepared to accompany the family to the dance. To Slim, the place was dazzling—like the Dancytown general store blown up by two thousand times or so and stocked with the very finest of merchandise, and not an item of hardware or groceries to be seen anywhere. There were separate departments for jewelry, cloaks and wraps for ladies and children, smoking articles, gloves, hosiery, confectionery, notions, toys, parasols, umbrellas, clocks and watches, house-furnishing and housekeeping goods, toilet articles, willowware, silverware, "white goods" (towels, tablecloths, bed-linen, and the like), fringes, feathers and flowers, millinery, laces, ribbons, shawls, upholstery goods, cutlery, crockery, infants' wear, leather goods, school supplies, walking sticks, hair goods, gents' and boys' "furnishings" and ready-made clothing, guns, shoes, corsets, fans, hats for every age and gender, stationery, and of course dry goods. There were handkerchiefs, ruchings, collars and cuffs, embroideries, insertions and edging, luggage, curtains, windowshades, bed canopies, carpet, doilies and runners, curtain poles and fixtures, croquet sets, ice skates and roller skates, musical instruments, baby carriages, manicure sets, playing-card cases, shaving cases, jewelry cases, toilet cases, albums and photograph frames, and a sizeable book department.

The Bainsley girls were well aware of their best colors. Golden-haired Lydia looked especially fine in lilac and light blue, and shades of green did wonderful things for her eyes and suited her complexion very well, but pale yellows and pinks weren't right for her. Her sister couldn't wear the cooler colors, and puce made her look twenty years older and distinctly washed out, but she did look splendid in her mother's soft-pink wool shawl with the delicate embroidery, and in rose-pink, dull golden-yellow, deep rose, and amber taffeta. Nevertheless, both of them were thrown into acute distress by the choice between brocade and merino, silk and satin, taffeta and velvet, patterns and stripes. Eleanor, after examining every bolt of damask the store offered in her favored hues, asked to see all of them a second time, then a third, before deciding on a yellow silk instead. Lydia ordered satin in pale blue, sapphire blue, and a shimmering green rather than settle on one. Marjorie, who had made her decision briskly and calmly—a lavender watered silk—took pity on the bored and restless Slim and quietly suggested they tour the rest of the store. "Surely you'd like to bring your family some gifts," she said.

"I would," he admitted. "Ma would love one of those India shawls I've been seeing..." His eyes drifted to the soft folds and flaming colors of one on a passing lady in a steel-gray taffeta.

"They're light, but wonderfully warm," Marjorie admitted. "That's why a woman can wear no other wrap even on a day like today. But you might not have realized what a luxury they are; the best of them can cost thousands. It's not... delicate... to talk about such things, but I don't want you to end up embarrassed in front of a clerk."

He immediately looked crestfallen. "I'm glad you didn't. That's way beyond my means."

"What's your mother's coloring?" Marjorie asked.

"Black hair, black-brown eyes, sort of rosy-beige skin. Pa says Andy will look just like her one of these days."

She thought for a minute. "I know just the thing," she announced. "Come with me."

Twenty minutes later they were leaving the shawl department with Slim's wallet lighter by $15.50 and a neat paper parcel under his arm enclosing a fine cashmere shawl of a soft, powdery blue. A stop at the jewelry department yielded a Chinese charm for Matt Sherman's watch chain and a set of milky-pink pearl shirt studs for Jonesy, and in the toy section they selected a handsome little schooner that would really float. "You can tie a good long piece of stout string to it," Marjorie said, "and your brother can sail it on the creek or the lake and not have to worry about it floating out of reach."

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "You've been very kind and... and thoughtful, helping me out." What he didn't say was that this interval, brief as it was, had persuaded him all the more certainly that she was what he wanted. Did he love her? Maybe; he wasn't sure—he'd never been in love before. But he liked her—liked her very much. Pa had told him, back when he was only sixteen, that it was a good thing to like the person you loved.

Purchases made, the party stopped at John Taylor's café on Broadway, a destination much favored by ladies who'd been shopping at Stewart's. Taylor was the city's premier caterer, and he made even unescorted ladies feel at home and quite important, serving them simple dishes, admirably cooked and courteously presented. His ice cream was famous and many of his customers purchased his artistic molds for use when they gave parties at home. Slim felt rather out of place among the predominantly female clientele, and he was sure Quentin did too, but with Marjorie sitting to his left he didn't care. As for Lydia and Eleanor, they were very satisfied with their day's finds and already chattering about the possible designs in which Miss Humphries might be asked to make them up.

The trip had been made just in time: by the time they took a short stroll along Broadway to settle their food, then got back to the carriage and boarded the ferry for the voyage back to Brooklyn, it was snowing with considerable vigor, and before supper was over there were three inches of it on the ground. It snowed all Saturday, and the boys built a snow fort in the yard and enacted a battle, with Slim to help them plan their strategy and use the right terminology; the dogs ran to and fro barking excitedly, leaping into the air after flying snowballs ("cannon fire") and sometimes getting smacked with one for their trouble, changing sides from "Yank" to "Reb" with seeming unconcern. From the windows of the night-nursery Marjorie watched the fun and thought that Slim must have been a very good big brother to his Andy—and that he would make a fine father, especially to sons. If you can't have what you dreamed of, she thought, you can have something that might be almost as good...

Monday the house was a-boil with preparations for the evening's party. Sheila, the kitchen-maid, and Rosemary, the scullery-maid, were put to polishing silver; Martha Curran bustled about the kitchen preparing the refreshments, and Alice Bainsley, who was happily over her headache, directed the other three maids in a whirlwind of cleaning—dining room, both parlors, the second-floor bedrooms (where the guests would leave their coats) and bathroom. Slim and Quentin came back from their ride and brushed and spot-cleaned their dress uniforms, then showered in the third-floor bath before the women took it over.

The guests began to arrive at five. Henry and Laurence Bainsley were very similar to their older brother in appearance, though neither wore glasses and Henry's eyes were brown. Laurence's wife was a stout, well-corseted redhead with a cheerful manner and a surprisingly light way of moving, Henry's a tall woman whose brown hair had an auburn cast. With them came Henry's two grown sons, Lucas, who was thirty, and Alexander, twenty-three; Lucas's young wife, Rosemary; Laurence's daughters, Emily and Louise, who were roughly the age of their cousins, and their brother Clement with his bride of four months, Iona. Chester Holton, who was a near neighbor of the family and also John Bainsley's attorney, was a widower, but he brought his daughter Evangeline (mostly known as Vangie) as well as her brothers Nathan and Gilbert. Barry Osgood couldn't dance, having been lamed by a riding accident in boyhood, but he was in great demand at all neighborhood affairs for his skill as a violinist; his father, Thaddeus, was the family doctor. There were a couple of stockbrokers, a couple of wholesalers, another shipbuilder, all with wives and most with a grown child or two. The dancing began straightaway; Vangie Holton and the four Bainsley girls, with Marjorie for support, took turns at the piano while Barry Osgood's violin, and occasionally Iona Bainsley on Marjorie's mandolin, provided accompaniment. At seven supper was announced. There was no possibility of seating everyone at the dining table, so Martha Curran and Mrs. Bainsley had arranged a buffet: roast beef, baked ham with fruit sauce, and cold smothered chicken; a big tureen of oyster stew with Montpelier crackers, and another of green-turtle soup; Julienne potatoes, sliced boiled beets, creamed onions and buttered squash; sauerkraut, potato salad, and turkey salad; piping-hot yeast rolls; a good dozen pickles, jellies, and preserves; and for dessert a devil's-food cake with vanilla icing, an angel-food cake with paper-thin lemon frosting, and blancmange with a choice of chocolate or raspberry-jam sauce, besides hot spiced milk punch and a silver urn of coffee. The company helped themselves, then scattered about the parlor floor, where seating was abundant, and ate and talked before the dancing resumed.

Under the usual rules of society, gentlemen were expected to give their full conversational attention to the ladies, but avoid talking about politics, science, religion, sports, and business topics—which left little but gossip and the arts. So, as a matter of practicality, the men would hive off in little groups from time to time (supposedly to give their dancing partners a chance to rest, which, given their corsetry, some probably needed) and discuss the "forbidden" subjects. At these times, in between dances, Slim found himself in demand to explain the investment possibilities of the West, and he conscientiously did his best, but always looking forward to the next chance he would have on the dance floor. He danced with Lydia and Eleanor, since they were his host's daughters, but whenever he got a chance he asked Marjorie to join him. It was while they were dancing the polka, with the German step, which was full of swing and spring, that he noticed John Bainsley off in a corner of the parlor in what looked like a deep and very serious exchange with Chester Holton and one of the stockbrokers. The last time he'd seen someone wearing Bainsley's expression, he reflected, it had been on a man who'd just been gut-shot. Had the stock market had a convulsion? No, surely Bainsley was diversified enough, with his family interests, to be pretty well cushioned against such things.

They saw the guests off about eleven, and while Marjorie and the girls headed upstairs (happily lamenting the soreness of their feet) and Alice went down to give orders about the leftovers, Slim lingered a bit, discreetly watching as Bainsley poured himself a tumbler of Zeigler & Brownelle's Baltimore rye whiskey out of a bottle extracted from a carved Chinese cabinet. It was the first time in his eleven days as a guest here that he'd seen the man touch whiskey—wine with meals, yes, and occasionally brandy, but never before whiskey. "Sir?" he ventured. "Are you... is everything all right?"

Bainsley turned, his face changing. "Oh, Slim. I didn't realize you were there."

"My Cheyenne friends taught me how to move quietly, sir," Slim reminded him. "And I've had occasion to practice it a few times these last couple of years. It's very easy to do on carpet. You didn't answer my question."

The man gave him a keen look. "It's under control, and I thank you for your concern. I haven't lived sixty years without having been knocked off my equilibrium a few times—or learning how to compensate for it."

"If there's anything I can do..." Slim began.

"No," Bainsley interrupted, with a half-smothered sigh, "I'm afraid it's my job to take care of." He drank the whiskey off quickly, without choking on it as might many men unaccustomed to strong liquor, and put the tumbler and bottle away, not renewing his drink. "You were a great help tonight, just the same. I think my friends will be quite amenable to the idea of making some investments out West. We may create a small joint-stock company for just that purpose."

Slim realized he was being politely told to mind his own business. And, being a Westerner, he wasn't offended. "I'm glad I could be of assistance, sir," he said. "I'll say good night, if you don't mind."

**SR**

At breakfast on Wednesday Quentin proposed an ice-skating party. "We'll all go," he said— "the boys and everyone." Ice-skating had become a favorite pastime since the decade's beginning, with even hoopskirted ladies taking to their blades and doing very well, giving observers occasional glimpses of white stockings under tilting hoops. Skating was one of the few sports in which they could indulge without losing their modesty, so they flocked to rinks and ponds and became champions at it. Their tippets and muffs kept them warm, and their hoops, like sails, seemed to speed them over the ice. Though many young men were off in the Army, older ones wore top hats and linked arms with their fair partners for a panoramic effect, while those who, like Slim and his friend, were home on leave, added a military dash to the swarms of bladers.

Slim had last been on ice skates when he was a boy in Illinois, skimming around stock-ponds and the shallower stretches of the creeks and playing shinny with his school friends during the slack time that came with every winter in farm country. He wasn't sure he'd remember how to do it, but once he got on the big outdoor rink (used as a baseball diamond in warm weather) not far from the Fulton Ferry landing, he found that his muscles hadn't forgotten a thing. The "little boys," shepherded by Everett, joined a flock of other juvenile skaters and left the grown-ups to themselves. Lydia and Eleanor wore identical sealskin suits, the former with a blue wool skirt and the latter with a scarlet one, and Marjorie looked positively gay in a mulberry plush costume trimmed with black marten fur, a tiny muff, an array of colored petticoats, and a velvet Glengarry cap jauntily trimmed with feathers. When they began to get chilly or tired, they'd retreat to the benches for a rest and get cheese toast and roasted apples and chestnuts and hot roasted potatoes from the vendors' carts, washing them down with hot cocoa, or hot mulled cider flavored with cinnamon and floating a single fragrant clove in each mug, and watching the antics of the more energetic youngsters—a boy and girl holding hands with their arms crossed; teams of little boys bashing a shinny puck around the ice; Everett cutting figure eights backwards; another big boy holding a pair of skates in his hands while a friend held his legs and pushed him around like a wheelbarrow, the two of them going faster than a horse could run. And in one corner, where the ice was smoother, a little old man was spinning and twisting in contemptuously beautiful curves while the careless throng clicked and slid around his reservation. Everyone else was laughing or shouting, but he wore a look at once withdrawn and self-centered, as if he were actor and critic both. It was great fun and made Slim remember, for the first time in quite a while, that he wasn't as old as he sometimes felt. But he noticed that Quentin seemed preoccupied and kept checking his watch, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the trouble to which his uncle hadn't quite confessed on Monday night.

Sunset was a little before five o'clock, so they left the ice at four-thirty and crowded into the carriage to head for home. Just as they got within the last hundred feet or so of the Bainsley house, the front door slammed open and a figure in a tall, shiny silk hat and a coat with a dramatic overcape swept down the steps, jumped into a waiting cab with a trunk strapped on the back of it—was that Declan MacAlister's heavy blue overcoat and fur gloves, his woollen muffler tied over his ears beneath a jaunty brown beaver hat, his iron-gray horse Cearul?—and drove off at a fast clip.

Quentin pulled the team up in front of the mounting-block, and he and Slim got down to help the ladies alight. "Surely that wasn't Marcus?" said Lydia, as her black lace-up skating boots touched the sidewalk.

"Why would he be here?" Eleanor retorted. "He barely went back to Princeton a week ago."

Quentin didn't say anything, but the way his mouth tightened told Slim he'd been right with his earlier guess. John Bainsley met them in the foyer, with Katie Rose, the maid, standing behind him sniffling into the hem of her apron. "Come along quietly, boys," he told his sons, "and I'll help you get your things off. Your mother has another of her headaches."

Lydia and Eleanor, whose presence their father hadn't even acknowledged, looked at each other in bewilderment as he shepherded the four boys up the stairs. "Katie Rose," Lydia demanded in her best not-quite-yet-lady-of-the-manor voice, "what's happened while we've been gone? Tell us at once!"

Through sobs the girl managed to explain that "Mister Marcus" had "done something dreadful," and his father had "sent him away," although it made his mother cry. "And it's taken to her bed she has," she concluded, "and Himself has asked Mary Catherine to make up the Chesterfield in the day-nursery for him."

Slim drilled his friend with a look. "You knew about this, didn't you, Quentin?"

The other officer sighed and nodded. "Uncle John sent Marcus a telegram while he was at the yard yesterday, ordering him to bring his trunk and come home, and last night he asked me to find some way of getting all of you out of the house. It's bad, Slim. He's run away from school—more than once—and gotten drunk, and gambled, and forged Uncle John's name at John Morrissey's faro saloon in Manhattan. From what Uncle John told me, he's dropped over two thousand dollars at faro there in the last year. That's not much for Morrissey's place, and of course it's not legally collectible—it wouldn't be even if he hadn't forged the IOU's—but it's the principle of the thing."

Faro, thought Slim. Of all the games for a novice to get hooked on! He'd encountered it on cattle drives to Denver, since it was the favorite of miners, and he knew that while—as long as it was straight—it was reputed to be the fairest of all games, it was also normal, at least out West, for the outfit to be rigged, the mechanism being hidden in the box. Many young collegians were truly "boys," having entered school as early as age fourteen, and a certain degree of boisterousness was expected from them on the grounds that "boys would be boys," the bread-slinging of the dining halls being among the commonest expressions of it; but they also had a frequent and lamentable tendency to get into just such impulsive and thoughtless trouble as the oldest Bainsley apparently had—gambling, affairs with chambermaids.

"How could Marcus do such a thing!" cried Eleanor indignantly. "Our own brother!"

"Poor Mama!" Lydia added. "I don't wonder she's taken to bed."

"Spare some sympathy for your father," Marjorie spoke up boldly, startling both girls. "Think how hard this must have been for him. Marcus is his oldest son, the one he'd always planned to leave the shipyard to. Now that won't happen. And he'll have to wait at least another seven or eight years till Everett can take over instead—maybe longer, if Everett decides he doesn't want to. That means he'll have to go on working till he's almost seventy, or even older. Or else bring in one of your cousins to help out." Slim realized that Everett must have confided in her, as in himself, some of his misgivings about college and a profession.

"How did he find out?" Slim asked. "Was it at the party Monday night?"

"That's about right," Quentin agreed. "Mr. Thurman—" Slim remembered that that was the name of the stockbroker he'd seen talking with Bainsley and Holton— "has a sister who's married to a lawyer in Princeton; she knows he knows Uncle John—they were in school together. About ten days ago she got an unsigned letter that laid out what Marcus has been up to. She sent it on to her brother, and he showed it to Uncle John, who showed it to me, along with the cover note she put in with it. She was pretty sure who wrote it; there's a Methodist preacher down there whose wife takes an extraordinary pride in being what she is, and her husband's nearly as vain and insufferable as she is. Both of them are entirely capable of some pretty vain or selfish conduct, and Mr. Thurman's sister called her a petty, vulgar, disagreeable little upstart—the only person she knew of who was spiteful enough to write such a message, ill-bred enough to send it, and cowardly enough to do it anonymously. But she made a few quiet inquiries and learned enough to convince her there was something to it, so she thought Uncle John should know. Apparently when Marcus was confronted with the evidence, he didn't deny it. The will's being changed—he won't be totally cut off, but he'll only get five thousand."

That would explain Holton being in on the discussion. For a moment, recalling the way he and Matt had parted, Slim felt a twinge of sympathy for Marcus. But, no, it wasn't anywhere near the same. He might have gone against his father's wishes, but he'd committed no crimes (which forgery was), nor had he in any way blackened the family name. Pa didn't approve of fighting for its own sake, and didn't think it proof of either manliness or courage for two boys to pummel each other in a schoolyard for the amusement of the rest; gladiators might have done so in ancient Rome, he'd say, but he hoped humanity had learned something since then. On the other hand, he understood that there were times when boys must fight, to defend themselves or someone weaker or to vindicate their own or their families' honor, and had even shocked Ma by maintaining that fighting was good for them. There was nothing in the world he detested so much as a coward, and his great dread was that one of his boys might grow up to be one, or a weakling. He would have preferred to see them bandits—as long as they were courageous bandits. He had no intention of raising mollycoddles, and Slim had been taught to handle himself with his fists, and later to use a handgun—not on a professional level, but quite skillfully enough to defend his own life and property and those of others at need. It wasn't the fighting part of the war that Matt Sherman had objected to, so much as what he called the "foolishness" of it all—he'd said more than once that it was too bad Massachusetts and South Carolina, whence came the worst extremists on either side, couldn't just be towed out into the Atlantic and sunk—and the possibility that Slim might end up killing his Uncle Ben, who'd moved down South almost thirty years ago in search of better opportunities, or one of his cousins.

Supper that evening was quiet and subdued. Mrs. Bainsley kept to her room, and nobody talked very much; everyone straggled up to bed early, Quentin and his uncle first. Slim knew that his friend must feel torn in two: he'd had to go along with his uncle's request, since Bainsley was the head of the family, and he'd probably been almost as shocked at Marcus's conduct as his father had, but he also felt that he had betrayed Slim and the girls (and hardly less Everett and the little boys—Marcus was their brother too, after all) by maneuvering them out of the house to give Marcus's parents the opportunity to deal with him privately.

But life went on. In the sewing room at the second-floor back of the house, where the Grover & Baker sewing machine had its lair, Miss Humphries the seamstress was hard at work, cutting and stitching the three new ball gowns. Mr. Bainsley went to the shipyard, Marjorie taught the little boys, Mr. Schoenfeld came in, callers came and went, meals were prepared and eaten. On Thursday the family, except for Mrs. Bainsley, went to the Academy of Music again, for a performance of Hamlet—the Shakespearean play most widely staged in American theaters, and also the most widely adapted and burlesqued—that retold the story, topically, in the context of a Zouave regiment, and in the following weeks they saw Kotzebue's domestic melodrama The Stranger, Lester Wallack's The Three Guardsmen (adapted from Dumas nearly fifteen years earlier, but still spirited and enjoyable), and a revival of A Glance at New York, featuring Frank Chanfrau in his defining role as Mose, the legendary "fire laddy." There were a couple of small parties held to balance the scales for the one at which Marcus's misconduct had become known, and a concert featuring Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust (Slim especially liked its stirring "Rákóczy March," named for a Hungarian patriot-prince), the marvellously energetic overture to Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla, several of Gottschalk's fantasies for piano, Jullien's "American Quadrille," George Bristow's Columbus overture, and an eclectic selection of operatic arias and ensembles, marches and battle-pieces, Scottish tunes and popular ballads, dance pieces and program music, and songs with music by Mendelssohn, Verdi, Rossini, and Bellini.

Slim, after another four inches of snow fell on Friday, came up with the idea of an evening sleighing party, and Quentin took it up with evident relief. Notes were sent around to young people of the Bainsleys' acquaintance, and arrangements were made for everyone to meet at the livery stable.

January and February were cold, raw months in Slim's native Middle West, and in Wyoming even colder, if dryer; outside the windows of the farmhouse where he'd been born, the earth would be tucked under a thick blanket of snow that absorbed the sounds of people and animals and softened the shapes of the land. There were two or three feet of ice on the ponds. The old familiar brush pile was just a mound, and the gateposts were old men in cloaks and cocked hats; down the lane, the stone walls looked as if they were topped with baked meringue. The days were like long twilights. Occasionally icy branches brushed against windowpanes covered with frost-flowers and -ferns. The cows and sheep huddled together in the barnyards, each with a cloud of steamy breath hovering over its nose. Rabbits were safely dressed in winter white, muskrats swam silently under the ice of the ponds, hawks circled slowly over the countryside, foxes barked in the night, and owls hooted from the trees. Weasels, also white-clad, squeezed through stone walls and along fences, hunting rats. Moonlight made the landscape silver, smoke rose from every chimney, and once in a while sleighbells jingled. After a heavy snowfall, huge drifts covered the road and crested in the fields like frozen ocean waves.

Winter was the busiest visiting season. Though there were always chores, the hard labor of harvest season was finished, pantries were full, there was little work to do, and it was far easier (even if cold) to travel by sleigh on the hard-packed snow than by wagon or even horseback during the dusty or muddy seasons. People bundled up in buffalo robes, bearskins, and fur robes, and thus fortified went to parties, took important trips, and visited friends and relatives near and far, covering great distances with ease. The sensations of sleighing were like no others: the flying speed, the singing of the steel runners, the crunch of hooves on hard-packed snow, the jingle of the horses' harness bells, the clean air stinging the nostrils. Sleighs often overturned on the snow-covered roads, but with the soft drifts to cushion the fall there was little danger of anyone's being seriously hurt. At the first sign of a good snowfall and a solid base on every village Main Street, the sleigh races would begin. Sometimes a score or more of trotters would be going one way and as many the other, weaving in and out, passing and repassing, while the streets were fairly lined with interested spectators and repeated cheers would go up at each finish; yet never a single serious accident was reported. The whole town was one constant chime of sleighbells. Sometimes the country roads got so badly drifted that pleasure sleighers found it safer to stick to those in and close to the town, but if they didn't, often people would organize races across the fields or a snow-covered frozen pond, and rival teams of boys and girls would race each other between villages, then hold a party at the hall of the terminal community, with hot spiced cider, doughnuts, and square dances. Among those religious groups who thought dancing a sin and the fiddle an instrument of the devil, young people resorted to the "play-party," a cross between dancing and the singing games of little children, with much choosing and stealing of partners, and "figures" in which couples swung each other by the hands, not the waist. Kissing games were great favorites too. Winter also meant easier hunting, with animal tracks traceable in the snow, and fishing through holes in the ice on a nearby pond, with tiny shacks, tents, or tepees of the Indian kind—even small fires set on the thick ice to lessen the possibility of frozen fingers and toes. Indoors the ancient game of checkers was enjoyed by countless men and boys, and sometimes blossoming into periodic town-wide or inter-village contests to determine the local champion.

As soon as the ponds and lakes froze, both children and adults pulled out their skates; being a graceful skater was reckoned as important as being a graceful dancer—in some cases more so, for while the conservative churches might frown on dancing, they could find no objection to twirling around on the ice on a pair of blades, possibly because no music was involved. Boys made hockey sticks out of strong, knobby tree branches and formed teams to bat a ball or a block of wood around the ice; they built fires after skating to warm their feet and roast potatoes. Grown people pulled one another across the ice on toboggans or sleds. Sliding on ice was a simple pastime, but there were many games that could turn it into a real sport. Even the smallest villagers loved a good snowball fight. The Christmas season meant it was time for the traditional raffle for the plump Christmas goose. There were many visits between families and friends; sociability was thought more important than presents. There were dances, parties, parlor games, pantomimes, and concerts. Slim looked forward to this excursion, as he had to the skating; it would be a way to recapture a lost time, a good time, out of his past. He only hoped it wouldn't sour in the end, as the skating had.

The evening chosen for the party was frosty and clear, and cold stars hung like bits of ice in the sky. There was much champing of bits and stamping of hooves as the three sleighs waited: one maroon-enamelled, its side panels painted with winter scenes; one big green-and-black cutter; and a big, beautiful green-enamelled swan's-neck model. Some forty people crowded into them, warmed by fresh, clean straw and hot bricks well wrapped in strips of old blanket, and bundled in cloaks and overcoats, hoods and fur caps and mufflers, blankets and fur robes. The horses' harness was decorated with long tassels of dyed horsehair and tufts of feathers; bells arched above it and chimed musically at every move they made. Slim took the reins of one team—it had been his idea, after all—and Quentin another. Reins snapped, the horses dug in, the harness bells came to life, and with a second snap of the reins they tossed their heads, snorting jets of warm breath, and began to trot, obviously enjoying themselves; and now the bells sang.

The white streets were filled with sleighs; the air everywhere was alive with the music of their bells. On the walks children, adults, and old folks were throwing snowballs at each other and at passing sleighs, tunnelling into drifts, digging caves, making snowmen, laughing, calling. At every slope children were belly-flopping onto wooden sleds, while smaller ones bundled to the ears sat on high-spraddled ones pulled by older sibs or adults; one man was well into his seventies and dressed in clothing years out of fashion, but he was smiling as he pulled his two (presumably) grandchildren, having fun. People called back and forth between sleighs, and sometimes they raced. Some of the drivers carried brass fish horns, which produced a single mournful yet somehow exciting blast of sound that hung in the air for a moment afterward. The frigid air brought a glow to every cheek, the music of the bells seemed to speed each driver's heart, and the pace picked up as the teams followed Henry Street down to its junction with Hamilton, turned left, and crossed Gowanus Creek. As they passed the northeast boundary of Green-Wood Cemetery the journey became a race, and soon it was all three sleighs abreast, drivers on their feet, whips cracking, girls shrieking, until sleighs coming the other way forced them to fall into single file, cheering and shouting.

Somebody took up "Get Along Home, Lucinda," and before long everyone in all three sleighs was singing, going on to "Lily Dale," "Viva l'America," "Simon the Cellarer," "Annie Lisle," and a dozen other popular songs. They followed Ocean Parkway out to Foster Avenue, turned left again, and drove out to Flatbush, where at last they pulled in at the yard of the best tavern in the village, a place that catered exclusively to the better trade—stagecoach passengers, horse traders, and such—and politely encouraged peddlers, drovers, and wagoners to frequent any less pretentious places nearby. Like all the best taverns, it was a rather elaborate two-storey building with a large taproom with a fireplace, several ornate parlors, a score or more of sleeping rooms, a billiard table and a large hall where country cotillions could be held, and a commodious stable for the horses. But it wasn't pretentious, and the taproom served as a local club, exchange, and social center where the neighbors stopped in for food, drink, companionship, and news, and where dances and other gatherings could be held. There was a piano in the hall, which one of the owner's daughters played, and a word in the man's ear soon had a boy scurrying off to the home of the nearest expert fiddler. Inside half an hour the room was resounding to the stamp of feet, the music of the piano and fiddle and the mouth organ of a local farmer who'd invited himself in, and they had dancing and a late and leisurely supper of oyster stew and several varieties of pie, all excellent. Then they sang songs from Stephen Foster and Thomas Moore, "Sweet Evelina" and "Folks That Put on Airs;" Slim taught his new friends "The High Salary Driver of the Denver City Line," and Quentin contributed "Pat Murphy of the Irish Brigade" and the soldiers' favorite, "Gay and Happy Still." One of the girls in the party played Schumann's "The Happy Farmer" and Gottschalk's "The Maiden's Prayer," and another proved capable of rendering a piece of "descriptive music," played by Frank Johnson's orchestra in 1839, said to have been intended to portray a "Sleighing party in an uproar, the horses supposed to be running away, with cracking of whips, jingling of bells, sound of post horns, etc." It was a perfect finale to the evening. Everyone clubbed together to give the fiddler and the staff generous tips, and going home, when the moonlight struck the banks of snow, they were no longer snow, but diamonds. Like the skating party, it was a delightful reminder of better, more peaceful times.

Battlefront news was sparse, for both armies, following the civilized custom of the day, had retreated to their winter encampments and were concentrating their attention on keeping warm—not an easy task, as temperatures had plunged below zero well into the South as early as New Year's Day, making for miserable conditions among soldiers and sailors. The season was described as "especially cold" in Richmond, and "severe" in both Kansas and the mountains of East Tennessee, and Slim wondered how his family was faring in the shadow of the Laramie Range. Some minor actions took place on various fronts; Union forces continued to shell Southern-held Fort Sumter, as they'd been doing since mid-August, and Confederate guerrillas attacked the steamer Delta on the Mississippi, but the chief military news came in from the far Southwest, where Kit Carson, the former mountain man (and, as Slim observed in the library one evening, an acquaintance of his father, who had met him while hauling supplies to the trappers' annual rendezvous) and now a ranch owner and a Federal Colonel, had been ordered to put a stop to the raids by Navajo war parties filtering down from their redoubts in northern New Mexico Territory.

Political news there was in plenty, however, and little of it good. As the year opened, large chunks of the Confederacy were in Federal hands, and the South was clearly on the defensive. Still, the fight to subdue it continued to be tough and costly, particularly in terms of lives. Indeed, the toll this year would prove so high that the North's resolve would waver once more, much as it had following First Bull Run. Mainstream Democrats struggled to escape the "Copperhead" label by claiming that they protected the people's liberty against overbearing Republican power. They also pointed to the Republican secret society known as the Union League, which required "unwavering loyalty and support of the government in all its efforts to suppress the rebellion" and whose members bitterly denounced any Northerner who dared to oppose the administration's policies. But intolerance of reasoned opposition to the war led to mob attacks on Democratic editors, destruction of printing presses, and the disruption of legitimate Democratic political rallies. Even the President seemed unable to distinguish dissent from disloyalty: he had suspended the writ of habeas corpus at various times—most recently the previous March, to be effective, with Congressional authorization, throughout the entire Union—allowing the government to imprison people without formally charging them. Some newspapers were shut down. Troublesome Democratic editors were arrested, along with numerous other critics. Heated partisanship upset families, disrupted neighborhoods, and even seeped into the sacred precincts of church organizations. Unionists in places opposed to the draft happily turned in dodgers and deserters as well as the neighbors who aided them. Unionist-dominated religious groups in the Midwest, where anti-war feelings were common, disciplined apparently disloyal clergy and pressured Democratic communicants to support the war effort. Some Midwesterners discussed establishing a confederacy of their own. Confederate agents were said to have made contact with sympathetic ones and to be providing financial aid to the Sons of Liberty, an opposition society with chapters in every Midwestern state.

As for Slim, he continued his shy courtship of Marjorie Herrington. The most popular outdoor gathering place (and picnicking spot) in Brooklyn was Green-Wood Cemetery, located on a ridge just southwest of Park Slope and overlooking the harbor. It was a product of the "rural cemetery movement" which had arisen in the '30's as a counter to the deplorable conditions then found in crowded and neglected city graveyards and creating a desolate setting for survivors at their final farewells, and was, indeed, one of the first of its kind in the country, after Mount Auburn, founded in Cambridge, Massachuestts, in 1831, which, though laid out in family plots, sought to retain in its landscaping the look of a beautiful woodland, with artful plantings of shrubbery and man-made ponds dotted here and there. Chartered in 1839, Green-Wood featured a rolling landscape, roads and paths winding through wooded lanes and narrow valleys, and a grand ceremonial gateway in red sandstone, designed by Richard Upjohn, with spiked Gothic archways and a bell that tolled as funeral cortèges approached. Manhattan tourists could get there by taking a ferry from the Battery to the Hamilton Avenue slip, where carriage tours (complete with guidebook) could be arranged at the cost of 25c. for adults and 10c. for children. On two or three occasions Slim persuaded Marjorie to let him take her for an afternoon drive there, borrowed the Bainsley team and hitched them to a rented buggy fitted with sleigh runners. They drove through Park Slope, so named from the gentle slope running down from the future Prospect Park toward the Gowanus Canal and the harbor beyond—a neighborhood which, as early as the '30's, had been the site of a "public house," a boys' boarding school, and eight or ten houses. During the '50's, one Edwin C. Litchfield, a lawyer who had made his fortune in railroad investments, had built an impressive mansion between Fourth and Fifth Streets. But not till the late '60's would any extensive development of the area begin.

In a day when municipal parks were few, sentimentalism the ruling quality, and almost every household personally familiar with death, cemeteries like Green-Wood were cherished as informal parks where families picnicked on sunny Sundays and laid flowers on the graves of loved ones. They offered air and light, safety and nature, joy and optimism; they facilitated acceptance of the physical separation of the dead from the living, while promising that the remains wouldn't be moved, abandoned, or vandalized. They often provided separate sections for children, where young families unable to afford their own plots could bury young or stillborn ones in a more comforting setting, to be reinterred when the family became better established and had acquired a family plot or mausoleum. Paths, designed so that many plots could have the highly desirable "roadside" location, were built wide enough to accommodate family carriages, and meandered over landscaped hills and valleys; benches were placed at gravesites, providing an inviting place for contemplation; and both offered an opportunity for the most casual excursioner to appreciate the workmanship and sentiments of the monuments. The earlier markers featured elaborate epitaphs and flat carvings; mid-century ones were three-dimensional works carved in the style of European sculptures, generally with symbols of hope, immortality, and the renewal of life—broken lutes, weeping willows, lambs, guardian angels, rosebuds, the lily separated from its stalk, the half-blown flower broken from its parent bud and fallen to earth, the broken shaft, the shield, the wreath of flowers with cross and crown, the angels and cherubs that would accompany the departed on the journey to Heaven, a seraph's face; the poppy for peaceful sleep, the anchor for hope, the acorn for the renewal of life, the oak for immortality, ivy for memory, sometimes a wreath of the two together. Equally frequent were trappings of home and family: books, hats, chairs, the likeness of a family pet, even the façade of the family home were carved on monuments. Children's gravestones most often portrayed a sleeping child, but lambs and doves were especially popular too, and rattles, dolls, favorite playthings, and the child with a lamb were other recurring motifs, while an empty chair or cradle symbolized the youngster's unfulfilled life. One design, done in low relief, showed a mother, guided by an angel, entering Heaven to rejoin her three babies waiting on a cloud. Tombstones were inscribed with gentle sentiments such as God Called Our Darling Home, Entered Spirit Life, Born Into Summerland, All is Well, Christ is My Hope, Gone Home, Called Home, Heaven is My Home, At Rest, Resting, Resting from His Labors, Remember Me, No Cross No Crown, Fallen Asleep in Jesus, Awaiting Glory, Just at Rest, Gone But Not Forgotten, The Morning Cometh, We Will Meet Again, Dying is But Going Home, In After Time We'll Meet Her, There Shall Be No Night There, They Are Not Dead, Absent, Not Dead, or She faltered by the wayside and the angels took her home, and the more family-oriented Missed at Home, Father, Our Mother, Darling Sister, Charlie, and Gentle, Sweet Little Freddie.

On the way home—it was a good ten miles out and back—Slim let the team pause on Lookout Hill, directly behind Park Slope, from which he and Marjorie could enjoy a panoramic view of Brooklyn with its many suburbs, New York, Staten Island, the Navesink Highlands in northern New Jersey, Sandy Hook, Canarsie or Jamaica Bay, all the Outer Harbor, a large expanse of ocean, and the great belt of level ground that extended eastward from the Narrows to south of Jamaica. Near the base of the hill stood an ancient elm that had been mature when Washington's forces retreated past it in 1776. Slim talked nostalgically of the equally beautiful, if more rugged, vistas that might be had from various spots in his family's high summer range. But he didn't sugar-coat the reality: he respected Marjorie's intelligence too much for that. He told her about the loneliness and isolation, especially in the wintertime when families outside the towns were often thrown back entirely on their own resources; about the threat of Indians, outlaws, wild animals, too much rain and too little; about the sometimes lengthy process of getting what you wanted through the store in Dancytown or by express, the limitations on culture and amusement, the rough living conditions. And he told her something of what it was like for the women. As early as the journey out, their adaptability was tested, for emigrant women routinely did a great many things that would normally be considered unladylike; they often had to pitch tents, load, unload, hitch up, and drive wagons, get wood and water, even drive loose stock ahorseback, sometimes because husbands were ill or off hunting game or looking for strayed or stolen stock, sometimes because a man had "broken" under the strain of the trip—and sometimes, of course, because he'd died. As the journey lengthened, companies split up and hired hands quit, and women helped scout out the trail or choose suitable campsites, pushed wagons out of the mire, even stood sentry and joined in the chase after buffalo. "I've seen them do all those things," he said— "not all in the outfit we were with, but at one time or another." And once the destination was reached, the labor shortage in the West wiped out normal rules about what jobs were appropriate for women. They planted and harvested crops, dug cellars and helped build houses, butchered hogs, and roped and branded cattle, just as farmers' daughters often did "boys' chores"; they learned to plow, drive reapers, chop wood, and herd sheep. Because hired help was hard to get, wives and daughters of small operators helped with all sorts of physically demanding work—not merely making butter and cheese, raising chickens and collecting eggs, and preserving food, but feeding and milking cows, weeding fields and gardens, tending seedlings, digging up vegetables, and gathering wild edibles. When husbands were away on business or were disabled by accident or illness, the women—some almost singlehandedly—took over the work of running the farm or ranch. Ranch women—especially the younger generation, like the four McCaskey girls next door to the Sherman spread, who, having been born on the frontier or come to it at an early age, were more flexible than their mothers, not indoctrinated into the myths of "ladyhood"—often learned their craft by working alongside their fathers, brothers, or husbands; they helped at roundups, branded cattle, mended fences, rode the range, and recovered strays. Many ranches were partnerships between husband and wife or father and daughter, and when help fell short on the family spread, women often set off on horseback to locate stray cattle, mend broken fences, and inspect waterholes. And they worked to earn a living, too. They drove stage, worked as barbers, reporters, artists, telegraphers, photographers, even miners and freight-drivers. They found jobs as typesetters throughout the West, and became everything from newspaper editors and professional writers to trail guides; some became barmaids and entertainers, though people thought them not respectable, or stepped in to take over a family business when widowed. In town they ran boardinghouses and cafés, sewed clothes for sale, or worked as waitresses, washerwomen, cooks, and cleaners. Western women lived under fewer restrictions than Eastern ones, and weren't fashionably weak and dependent—in fact, a clinging vine of a woman could be a millstone around a man's neck.

Once he asked Marjorie what she most wanted out of life. "I know I've made it pretty clear what I want—to go back to bein' a rancher, to be a partner with Pa and maybe Andy, to make a success of our place. And eventually to have someone to share it with me. But what about you?"

She gazed thoughtfully out over the view. "I like pretty things, and convenience, and all the other advantages you get from living in a city," she began. "I won't try to lie to you and say that I don't. But what would be more important is a man who expressed at least a passing curiosity about what I feel, and think, and want. And purpose—something more meaningful than endless balls and dinners and theater parties, or even than teaching little boys, although I get a lot of satisfaction from that. Variety—of places and people and activity. And a home of my own. It doesn't have to be a grand one, just mine—and my husband's, of course."

He grinned. "Glad you plan to give the fellow equal space."

"I wish I could get to travel, to see something of Europe," she admitted. "But I don't have to. After all, you can't miss what you've never had. And I'm not afraid of being poor. I've been that. I don't know if I could do all the things you've talked about, but I'd be willing to try. Mostly what I want is a man of integrity and principle, one that I can respect and admire, who'll respect and appreciate me in turn, and make me feel safe, happy, and loved." She sighed. "But it won't happen. I'm not the kind of person young men look for. I'm plain, I'm dependable, I'm sensible. I'm a machine that's always in working order, and that's about it. No young man will ever find me attractive, and if one did, I wouldn't be attracted to him. I'm too discriminating. They're all lame-brained or outright stupid, simpering or self-centered, unstable, unsettled—or else, if they have minds, they think such a thing is wasted on a woman, whose language is generally supposed to be a kind of childish twaddle. They're either flippant, or sentimental, or both."

I'm not, he thought. At least, I don't think I am. Not after growin' up with Ma and Pa as an example. And you're not plain. What could make anyone have so low an opinion of themselves? "You sound kind of bitter... and hopeless," he observed.

"I suppose it's because my father was such an idealist. He never behaved as if he was disappointed in humanity's inability to reform itself, but I can't see a reason to waste your substance longing for something that can't be."

"So you're a realist."

"I hope I am," she agreed.

"I think pioneers have to be," he said. "Most of our problems out West come out of the environment we live in, or the people—some of the people—we share it with. You can't lie to the land or the weather or the wild things, or lie to yourself about them; if you try, they kill you. And outlaws and stock-thieves and hostile Indians are almost as bad. But I think it's important to be able to dream, too. You need to be able to look at the land as it is, and see what it could become. What we've got out West is like nothing that's ever been, not even in this country. I don't have the vision Mr. McCaskey has—I don't know anybody who does, not even Pa—but I think it can be something really special. And I think, if we have respect for the land and the realities of it, we can make it that way. Beautiful, and free, and still a little wild, but a good place to live and work and raise families."

He still wasn't sure whether he loved her, but he knew he was growing closer to her all the time, and he had some hopes that it was mutual. Would she have said what she'd said about young men, to a young man, if she thought he was the same as the rest of them? It didn't even seem to have occurred to her that he was technically one of the class of humanity she'd just insulted so thoroughly. Didn't that mean she must see him as standing outside that class? As having at least potential?

And suddenly there was only a week left until he and Quentin would have to go back to camp. Mrs. Bainsley had recovered from the shock of her oldest son's offenses—she'd even been going out with the rest of them, and her husband had moved back into their bedroom—and Miss Humphries, with help from the three girls, announced, the day before the critical party, that their gowns were complete. Slim went down to Hunts Lane to pick up the carriage, and he and Quentin and Mr. Bainsley sat in the library talking about the latest political news until the rustle of skirts on the stairs announced the descent of the women, who had been getting dressed in Lydia and Eleanor's room on the third-floor front, with Mary Catherine, the under-housemaid, to help.

Mrs. Bainsley came first, in a wine-colored silk evening dress, her blue-black hair elaborately arranged in coronet braids and with strands of seed pearls twisted through it, square-cut emeralds in her ears, an emerald necklace, and bracelets of chased silver over her tinted French kid evening gloves, with a beaver muff, and a black fur cape folded over her arm. Lydia followed, her golden blonde hair—a perfect contrast to her mother's—arranged in a waterfall and caught in a silver evening net, her shimmering green satin formal gown (she had finally decided to put the sapphire- and pale-blue bolts aside for another time) trimmed with Alençon lace and May rosebuds; her gloves were a pale yellow kid, her brow crowned with a wreath of small pink rosebuds made of thin velvet, and she wore little pearl-and-turquoise earrings, a medallion locket with more pearls and turquoises running in a vine pattern around the border, and a longer necklace of turquoise; she carried a sealskin cloak and muff. Eleanor wore a yellow silk dess spangled with tiny blue cornflowers, its wide neck and full short sleeves baring her arms and shoulders, with a headdress of organdie and India muslin trimmed with English point lace, Etruscan gold earrings, an amethyst brooch and a necklace of coral beads, a pair of wide bracelets on either arm, apricot-colored gloves, a velvet cloak and a chinchilla muff; her hair was clubbed into a cadogan and set with elaborate gold and amethyst combs. Each carried her dancing slippers in a beaded pouch bag and wore black kid winter walking boots heavily decorated with braid or velvet pleating; each had a small fan of lace, silk, or feathers, with sticks of ivory, wood, or tortoise-shell. And at last, bringing up the rear, came Marjorie in a lace-trimmed gown of lavender watered silk, with kid gloves that matched, an evening scarf of gold tissue about her shoulders, a topaz necklace and earbobs, an oval cameo of Diana pinned above the cleft of her breasts. Her wrap was a brown plush pelisse with a trim, close-fitting collar of brown beaver fur and a light brown silk tie. Her hair was dressed in long curls down her back—the first time Slim had seen it unconfined by a net or a snood—and held back off her face with round-topped shell combs that curved close to her head; there was a dainty trifle of rich lace secured to it. It was all very simple, and it suited her as a more elaborate outfit would never have done; her hair alone—it was just as glorious as he'd suspected it must be—was enough to mark her out. She smiled as he reached up to take her hand, and he knew that he would ask his question tonight.

**SR**

Manhattan was not only an island, but a narrow one, which meant that when fashionable people decided their current neighborhood would no longer do, they had few options except to move northward, away from the older, more thickly-settled parts into what amounted to virgin territory. This tendency had first become clear in the late '20's, when elegant rowhouses and mansions were built along St. Mark's Place, the three blocks of Eighth Street west of Third Avenue; a typical dwelling, at No. 101, was advertised in 1845 with an undercellar (pantries, wine vault, woodroom and coal bin), basement (kitchen, laundry, breakfast room, storeroom and pantries), first floor (two drawing rooms, dining room, study and pantries), and three upper floors (each with four "large rooms," water closet, bathroom, and pantries); Croton water was piped up as high as the third storey. This house was thirty-seven and a half feet wide (half again the norm) and fifty-four deep, and its rear yard, which extended back to Ninth Street, featured a well, cistern, and thirty-foot-deep stable (including coachhouse, harness room, and stalls for four horses). For thirty years this part of Manhattan was the neighborhood of choice among the "best people," but by mid-century, lower Fifth Avenue and adjacent Ninth through Twelfth Streets had become among the most fashionable in the city, and therefore saw some of the earliest and most spectacular Italianate, Anglo-Italianate, and Second Empire dwellings in the city. The so-called "Faubourg Saint-Germain set," the families of Colonial ancestry, had their old-fashioned mansions on Stuyvesant Square, from which they would not be dislodged even when everyone else was moving to Fifth, but by the '50's, the latter was the axis of the city's finest residential area, a rectangular district bounded by Lexington Avenue on the east and Sixth on the west and always moving northward, as the narrowness of the strip forced status-conscious New Yorkers "to go further and further along it," as one newspaper observed, "in order to secure fashionable homes."

Fifth epitomized the wealth, social whirl, and occasional vulgarity of mid-century New York. In its three-mile course from Washington Square to the shanty- and rock-filled fields at the foot of Central Park at 59th Street, it consisted of several patrician sections—the 14th Street, Madison Square, and Murray Hill areas. Several prestigious men's clubs were located along it, including the Union League, established only last February "to oppose disloyalty to the Union, to promote good government and to elevate American citizenship," which had built its first headquarters that year, at 26 East 17th Street, facing Union Square; the Athenaeum, with its early Mansard roof, which had gone up at No. 108, on the southwest corner of 16th Street, in 1859; the Century Club, founded in 1846 and originally intended for "Artists, Literary Men, Scientists, Physicians, Officers of the Army and Navy, members of the Bench and Bar, Engineers, Clergymen, Representatives of the Press, Merchants and men of leisure," although by the mid-'50's it had consisted chiefly of merchants, businessmen, lawyers, and doctors; the venerable New York, founded for literary and professional men, whose constitution was written in 1845, and which had stood at 15th Street from 1862; and the ancestor of them all, the Union Club, founded in 1836 and housed in a facility built nineteen years later at Fifth Avenue and 21st Street. All exuded well-being, good cuisine, and a comfortable refuge from life's annoyances. House rents in this part of town, in the current decade, ranged from $4000 a year ("never less") to a "gentle and genial" $12,000. After the war, one magazine was to estimate that none of the 340 houses along Fifth cost less than a then-handsome $20,000, while a newspaper commentator noted that $100,000 and $200,000 mansions, with $30,000 to $50,000 in furniture, were "rapidly making their appearance." By the early '70's the fashion-conscious would be building between about 40th and 45th Streets. Yet only several blocks east or west of the "unbroken line of brownstone palaces" could be found overcrowded tenements, factories, stables, and littered and noisy streets, sometimes still inhabited by hogs. And on the nearer, fashionable streets, in an era of soaring house rents and prices punctuated by occasional panics, hard-pressed families often took in boarders to make ends meet.

In the '50's, mansions, clubhouses, and churches of celebrated grandeur and extravagance had begun to rise on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square and 23rd Street; by 1859 a continuous line of magnificent mansions lined the thoroughfare all the way to the foot of the Park. Most were in the Italianate manner, four storeys plus basement; some were as wide as thirty feet, and their prices ranged from $20,000 to $300,000. One of the earliest examples of the type, built in 1848-9, was the Richard K. Haight residence, a massive three-storey cube at the corner of Fifth and 15th, and across the street from it, the following year, the Henry Benkard mansion, also three storeys but taller (owing to the fact that its uppermost floor had higher ceilings than Mr. Haight's did), was erected. About the same time the Van Buren residence, which had four storeys and was three rooms deep from front to back, arose on the north side of 14th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Herman Thorne at Fifth and 16th, and Henry Parish a block up, also raised extravagant mansions, and as far up as West 21st, between Fifth and Sixth, was a quiet, shady area where splendid homes were found. Such places introduced an unparalleled grandeur of scale and richness of ornament to the city's rowhouses, which up to then had been dominated by first the Federal and later the Greek Revival modes, and New Yorkers quickly reached the opinion that they were in better architectural taste than the latter. They also introduced the shadowy and impressive brownstone front—a four-to-six-inch-thick veneer laid on over a brick core, although only on those surfaces facing a street; the back-yard walls were invariably left in naked brick—to a startled city, though occasional Gothic and Italianate rowhouses had been built with it in the middle '40's. Until the eve of the war, ordinary brick had remained acceptable for rowhouse fronts, but thereafter it was relegated to modest middle-class and workingmen's dwellings, with the sole exception being the costly, smooth-surfaced "pressed" or "Philadelphia brick." By about 1860, fine rowhouses boasted four and sometimes even five storeys, besides the half-basement that held the kitchen and "offices," and stood fifty to sixty feet tall, though even the most fashionable rarely exceeded the standard twenty-five-foot width. The narrowest ones remained just as tall as the wider examples, which, one writer observed, were "necessarily too narrow for good proportion, and would appear likely to fall unless propped up by their neighbors." But as these houses were generally built in blocks, shoulder to shoulder, they gave the impression of a single structure, and made for an unusually impressive streetscape, to which the 200-foot-long blockfronts of the city's avenues, between crosstown streets, were particularly well suited, as the cornices, doorway porches, and stoops led the pedestrian's eye down the sweeping vista. And in this era of social upheaval and rapid accumulation of wealth, the bold forms and lavish ornament of the Italianate style reflected the social ambitions of New York's well-to-do families better than the modestly ornamented planar fronts of the earlier styles; the large door hood and "consoles," or scrolled brackets, cast the fashionable "picturesque" shadows on the housefront, and the deeply recessed doorway introduced a mysterious dark volume to the façade. Front-parlor windows usually dropped to the floor, and during the '50's cast-iron guard railings or a low balcony began to come in to shield the room from the view of passersby.

The finest rowhouses of the '50's and '60's in the 14th Street and Madison Square areas had attained truly monumental dimensions: twenty-two to thirty feet wide, sixty or sixty-five deep, a basement and four storeys, with three rooms on the "parlor floor"—a windowless center room sandwiched between the front parlor and the large rear dining room, linked to them by pocket doors and essentially part of them; upstairs, two bedrooms on each floor, with the centermost ten feet occupied by identical pairs of washrooms and closets, and often a bathroom at the back of the hallway. In the '60's, new-built homes dropped to a more reasonable fifty or so feet in depth, with a single thirty- to thirty-five-foot-deep front parlor (which epitomized the family's roots, refinement, and social position, real or imagined) and a dining room behind it; the family sitting room or library was often moved to the second-floor front, where it occupied the full width of the house. In an era of large families and several live-in servants, the sixteen-room, five-storey-tall rowhouse offered grand parlors for entertaining, spacious living quarters for the family, and privacy for parents, children, and staff. The stairs, of course, were a never-ending trial, especially to the female servants: the dumbwaiter had been introduced in the '40's, but people were still faced with the "fruitless and health-destroying labor of carrying themselves from floor to floor," which one architect compared to a treadmill.

The growth of the West Forties and Fifties below Central Park had generally begun in the '50's and '60's, and by about 1855 was well under way. Fine rowhouses were built along most of the blocks in this area, though the nearer to Fifth Avenue the more fashionable they were. In the current decade they had crossed 34th Street into Murray Hill, which took its name from the old country house of Robert Murray, at Park (sometimes known as Fourth) Avenue and East 37th, where during the Revolution his wife served tea to the British General Howe and his staff, thereby delaying their troops while the Americans escaped to the north. Gramercy Park was another fashionable area. At this time, as a rage for the Paris of Louis Napoleon's Second Empire swept the nation, new-built row houses, though basically Italianate-style, were often finished off with fashionable steeply sloped "French," or mansard, roofs pierced by two or three windows and decorated at the front edge with a picturesque "cresting," or cast-iron railing. But beyond 59th Street, opposite Central Park, the West Side, even in the revived boom of the late '70's, and on into the late '80's, remained barren, open land marked with occasional shanties, vegetable gardens, menacing rock outcrops clambered upon by browsing goats, lowly taverns, rubbish heaps, occasional small frame houses, and decrepit eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century country mansions. West of Eighth and below 59th, noisome tenements and factories filled the blocks. There was also no public transportation to speak of: before 1870, the Eighth Avenue omnibus line ran only a single car, and at long intervals, from 59th to 84th Street; at each end it turned around and returned whence it had come. As for the East Side, during the '50's and well into the '60's, it was definitely less than respectable. In 1867, George Templeton Strong was to describe Madison Avenue in the Forties and Fifties as "a rough and ragged track...hardly a thoroughfare...rich in mudholes, goats, pigs, geese." Huge rock outcroppings, bare hills, occasional frame dwellings and villas, piles of trash, and the decrepit shanties of the poor marked much of this part of Manhattan. Fifth and Madison Avenues and the adjacent blocks were already becoming an elegant residential area like Murray Hill to the south, but on Park Avenue factories, saloons, and seedy tenements overlooked the ugly railroad tracks leading into Grand Central Station. Fashionable New Yorkers raced their fine horses up and down the gentle hills of muddy Third Avenue, the "exercise and trial ground of all the fast trotters and pacers in the city," and frequented the taverns and blacksmiths' shops along the way. The foot of 42nd Street, at the East River, was Dutch Hill, a hamlet of shanties teeming with garbage, dogs, pigs, and dirty, ill-clothed children. Further north, in the East Sixties, summer houses, beer gardens, and vanishing patches of one-time forest lined the river, and cows would pasture near Spuyten Duyvil into the following century.

In the '50's, palatial brownstone rowhouses and occasional mansions had begun rising on the north, east, and south sides of Madison Square, and by now this was the center of fashionable New York. Around the edge of the park stood the Leonard Jerome mansion, one of the most extravagant in the city, on the corner of 26th, at No. 32; the residence of Mrs. William Colford Schermerhorn, a social leader of the city's celebrated "Upper Ten Thousand;" the Fifth Avenue Hotel, founded as recently as 1859 and then New York's finest, which dominated the west side; and The Louvre, a lavish "concert saloon" famous for its opulent drawing rooms, mirrored bar with champagne fountain, and some of the prettiest "waiter girls" in town. The Jerome property, built in 1859 by a Wall Street speculator who, at not quite forty-two, had already made and lost several fortunes, was six storeys tall, two of them comprising a Mansard roof. (There was also a fully-equipped private theater, with seating for 600, around the corner, and beyond that stables appointed in black-walnut panelling, plate glass, and carpeting.) This extravagant pile quite matched Jerome's flamboyant lifestyle of fine racehorses, costly carriages, tempestuous love affairs, and splendid parties. At the ball given to celebrate its completion, hundreds of Manhattan's elite danced in the huge second-floor ballroom where one fountain spouted champagne and the other eau de cologne.

Tonight's ball wasn't quite on Madison Square, but it wasn't very far away, being held in a house facing on Fifth Avenue in the lower 20's. At first glance it reminded Slim somewhat of a pair of brownstone mansions he'd seen at No. 2 and 3 Pierrepont Place—only a block back from Montague—and built as recently as 1856-7. They were mirror-images, with stoops and front doors were set side by side, and two storeys above; along the free side of each marched three sets of windows, with a conservatory on the parlor floor, and behind it a full-height square bay. The simple iron rails of the gently bowed Penny Bridge spanned the continuation of Montague Street that led down to the waterfront and the Wall Street ferry-slip. Then he realized he wasn't looking at a double house, but a single free-standing one. It was double-width—fifty-two and a half feet across the frontage, plus a thirty-foot-long conservatory added on at the left front—and reached back nearly eighty feet from façade to rear wall. It was four storeys and a basement high, a wide, mansion-sized version of the era's fine Italianate-style brownstone-front rowhouses, with a boldly rusticated basement (including a Gothic Revival dining room overlooking the back yard, the reverse of the usual layout), high balustraded stoop, and lavish door hood supported by consoles. Inside the front door was an oblong foyer, twelve feet wide by nine deep, and behind that a second, twelve by twelve, each with doorways left and right. Behind these in turn was an oval rotunda, twenty-seven feet deep and eighteen broad at the middle, with a curved staircase leading up on either side. The party filled the two principal rooms—the drawing room to the left of the foyer, the music room to the right—each of which was twenty-one feet across and thirty-one and a half deep, and spilled over into the bay-windowed middle parlor (only twelve by eighteen) and the sixteen-and-a-half by twenty-two-and-a-half back one, as well as the downstairs dining room, where the hosts, like the Bainsleys, had provided a buffet. The upper rooms' elaborate white "statuary mantels" (which meant fireplaces carved in naturalistic forms underlaying the plain mantelshelf), richly molded plaster ceiling ornament, sparkling chandeliers, rosewood doors, and two pairs of Corinthian columns separating each room from the next, made the house one of the city's showplaces, though easily surpassed in ornament, if not size, by the Thorne, Haight, Parish, and Stewart mansions.

He'd thought he had some experience, by now, of "society" parties, but this one was both larger and fancier than the ones the Bainsleys had given and attended since he'd been staying with them. In fact, he hadn't realized till tonight what exalted circles the Bainsleys had entry to, even if they didn't ordinarily bother with the social whirl. Many individual fortunes had been greatly increased and new ones created by war contracts. So much money was being made, and such was the urge to enjoy it, that as early as the spring of 1863 New York society had returned to its round of parties and balls. Indeed, Ward McAllister had staged a week-long party in November of '62, just before a Union army marched to death and disaster at Fredericksburg. The doldrums in which stage entertainment had been mired since Sumter began to experience a reversal. Everything succeeded. There was a hectic, almost frenzied determination to be amused, a lot of money in evidence. Theaters and opera houses were crowded; prizefights were popular; horseracing for huge purses, and with unrestrained betting, flourished. And there was a shameless demand for diamonds, pearls, Brussels carpets, and French gowns. No one made Slim feel at all unwelcome—knowing nothing of his countrified origin, they had no reason to think him anything but what he looked like, a decently brought-up, properly courteous junior officer in the Union forces—but he felt all wrong. Fortunately he had one major advantage in Marjorie. Custom held that members of a family shouldn't converse together or dance with one another at a ball or cotillion, but he and Marjorie weren't related (unlike Quentin and the twins), and while girls were advised never to dance twice with the same partner—and no more than three, the first dance, the last dance, and the dance before dinner, with their escort—this was an injunction not always observed. Each girl received a "program," or dance card, on which young men signed up for the various dances. It was quite correct to fill up your card with men you liked, but to allow any of them more than the "proper" two turns could incite gossip. If you refused the first hopefuls, waiting for your favorites to ask, you might be left a wallflower; if not, you might have no dances left for your favorites when they did appear. Yet an unanticipated opening on your program was considered embarrassing. Cutting—which wasn't the same as cutting in; it meant refusing to dance with someone once his name was on your program—wasn't considered proper unless the man had behaved badly or had paid undue attention to another woman during the evening. But Marjorie, although invariably included in the Bainsleys' social life, had never seen herself as being more than on the very fringes of society—if she was in it at all—and saw no particular reason to abide slavishly by its rules. What did it matter to her if people "gossipped" about her and this handsome young unknown? She had never expected to marry into these rarified circles to begin with.

So she gave one dance to her host, one to each of his sons, one to Quentin, one to Mr. Bainsley, and the rest to Slim—which made his heart leap with the possibility that she might really care for him. There were waltzes, galops, quadrilles, polkas, schottisches, quicksteps, and jigs, and at one point, during a pause to rest and cool their hot throats with cool, refreshing cranberry shrub, an introduction to a lady named Mrs. Anna Jarvis Bell and a gentleman in his mid-thirties whom Bainsley addressed as "Thee" (with a soft th), though his name was in fact Theodore Roosevelt, of East 20th Street—a merchant, philanthropist, and partner in a family-owned glass-importing firm: people Bainsley thought might be interested in joining the joint-stock investment company he'd mentioned. Marjorie knew Roosevelt and asked after his son, whom she called "Teedie." After he'd left them, she explained to Slim that Mrs. Bell was the second wife of a former dry-goods merchant, Molyneux Bell—"he had a store on Canal Street; he specialized in cloaks and coats"—who had enlisted as a Captain in the Commissary Department in September of '62 and was currently serving in the Army of Kentucky; in his absence she had made shrewd use of his money to get into brokerage and speculation, as a surprising number of comfortably fixed New York ladies had done since the war began. "They've got two little children; Florence will be seven this year, and Nelson four." As for the Roosevelts, Theodore Jr., who was five, was sickly and asthmatic, prone to frequent ailments. "No one knows why," she admitted. "He has an older sister, Anna—she just turned nine—and a younger one, Corinne, who's two, and there's a second boy, Elliott—they call him Ellie or Nell, why I don't know—who'll be four next month, and every one of them is obnoxiously healthy."

"The family's in society, I take it," Slim observed.

"Well, sort of—like the Bainsleys. Not hyperactive, but there are some affairs you have to attend; it's about business connections and family obligations, as much as anything. Mr. Roosevelt's been keeping a lot to himself since the war broke out; his wife's from Georgia—Roswell—and maintains her Confederate sympathies, which is kind of embarrassing for him, because he's been a prominent supporter of Lincoln and the Union effort from the start. Her two brothers are both on the other side, everyone knows it—Navy though, you're not likely to ever run into them."

"There are worse things, I guess, than being failed by your oldest son," Slim murmured. "Did I tell you my pa didn't want me to join up? His youngest brother moved down to New Orleans years ago, got to be a major player in the river trade out of there. Pa was afraid one of us would end up killing the other."

"That's dreadful," she said. "And yet, I suppose in a war like this one, it's happened more than once." She was watching his face. "Will you be able to go home? I know you've talked about it..."

"We had some pretty tough disagreements about it," Slim admitted, his voice quiet and heavy with the pain of the memory. "And I'll never feel easy in my mind till I can settle that with him, tell him I'm sorry it went the way it did. But Pa doesn't believe in shuttin' the door on family—or friends either. And he understands that, if you raise a boy up right, you have to know a time may come when his notion of what he has to do won't be the same as yours. That makin' choices is what bein' a man is all about. When I left... well, it's a longish sort of story, but in the end he told me, 'Just know one thing, boy. There's never gonna be anything you can do, or say, or become, that'll make you any less a part of this household, or any less welcome at that door. No matter if it takes you twenty years to come back, you can walk in any time and sit down and pick up right where you left off at, and nobody will ask you any question you don't want to be asked.' "

"I think," she said softly, "that your father was very proud of you."

"I hope so," he admitted. "I've tried to behave, these two years and some, the way I've thought he'd want me to. It hasn't always been easy, and he still doesn't write to me; Ma does that. But I know one thing—that I've never yet gone against any of the things he spent eighteen years teachin' me." He drew a deep breath. "We're too serious for a ball. Let's dance. I like your hair that way," he added. "I don't see why you've kept it hidden away since we've met. Maybe I've spent too much time around the Cheyennes, but I think there's something kind of special about red hair. And as for wearin' it down, Ma likes to just tie hers back at the nape to keep it out of her way. She says she agrees with the Indians—can't see what the point is of havin' long hair at all, if all you ever do with it is wad it up in a net."

He'd lost track of the rest of their party in the crowd, and it wasn't until nearly ten o'clock that he caught sight of Quentin, dancing with a blonde girl whose gold-sequined blue velvet dress rather clashed with the blue of his uniform. How it happened he wasn't quite sure, but either Quentin and his partner or a passing couple were bumped by someone else or made a misstep, and a collision took place. "I'm sorry—" Slim heard his friend say, and then a woman's voice overrode him: "Quentin!"

Something in her tone set off all the alarms in Slim's head. He deftly drew Marjorie back against the nearby wall, held up his forefinger to silence her when she seemed about to speak, and listened, knowing he shouldn't, but impelled by something he didn't stop to question. Quentin for his part had gone suddenly pale, and his pupils had contracted in shock. "Arabella?"

"Quentin, it is you!" She was a rust-wine redhead, taller than the average woman, early twenties, Slim guessed, wearing a pale peach ball gown with ribbons of deeper peach edging its yards of pleated ruffles and more wound through her hair, a necklace of rare pink pearls strung at her throat. "Why didn't you let us know you were in town?"

"I'm not," he said. "I'm staying in Brooklyn, at Uncle John's house. And you know why, Arabella. Are Mother and Father here?"

In all the months Slim had known him, Quentin had never once mentioned parents, at least not living ones—or siblings; Slim hadn't wanted to ask, but he'd naturally supposed that his friend was a lone orphan who'd been at least partly raised by his uncle and aunt—in a day when accident and illness accounted for many parents, probably thousands of youngsters were taken in by kin ranging from grandparents to grown siblings. He'd even spoken, their first day in Brooklyn, of "our cook," just as the Bainsleys did—although, on reflection, Jonesy, who wasn't even a shirttail relation to the Shermans, spoke of "our place" and "our stock." Arabella for her part looked around with an air of unease before she said, "Of course they are, or I couldn't be here. You know how Father feels about unmarried girls going to balls without their parents; he thinks it's even worse than accepting a dinner invitation."

She's his sister! Slim thought. The other dancers were studiously avoiding or ignoring the exchange, leaving Quentin and Arabella and their partners standing in a little eddy all their own. The orchestra, which for the best dispersion of sound was located in the middle parlor, was having to keep up a rather high volume, and if Slim and Marjorie hadn't been so close and standing so still, they wouldn't have been able to hear what was being said.

"So you didn't marry Parker Haberman, then," Quentin guessed.

"I couldn't," said Arabella, "for the same reason you haven't written for almost three years. It's not the same for a girl as for a boy."

"You're old enough now for it not to matter," said Quentin.

"I was then, too. But one of us cut off from the family is enough. At least I think so. There are other men. I was... fond of Parker, but..."

"But you're a coward," Quentin finished with a brutality Slim had never seen in him, and it shocked Arabella too; he saw the tears start to her eyes.

"That isn't fair," she protested.

"Neither was the choice I had to make," her brother retorted bitterly.

"Arabella, what—" A balding man of perhaps fifty, with the smoothly portly look of prosperity, had appeared behind her partner's shoulder; beyond him again Slim could see a woman of about the same age, with Arabella's same rust-wine hair just slightly faded with the intervening years, dressed in a cream taffeta with a pattern of rosebuds on a brown satin trellis, a fichu with a deep lace flounce over her bare shoulders. "Quentin!"

"Father." Quentin's tone was icily cordial, just barely the proper side of respect.

"Well," said the presumed Mr. Colville in a faintly mocking voice, "I see you haven't made colonel yet. Or major. Or even captain. Not much return for almost three years, is it?"

"It was never about return, Father. But then you wouldn't understand that, would you?"

Colville Senior flushed. "That's insolence."

"I'm twenty-three, Father, in case you've forgotten. And considering what you said to me the last time I saw you, I doubt I have to be very much concerned about insolence, or anything else that has to do with giving offense. You made it abundantly clear what I could expect if I enlisted."

The man snorted. "I had hoped my boy was going to make a smart, intelligent business man and not be such a goose as to be seduced by the declamations of buncombed speeches. Only greenhorns enlist; those who are able to pay for substitutes do so, and no discredit attaches to it. A man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health."

"Opinion," Quentin grated, "is what this whole war comes down to in the end, isn't it?" He bowed stiffly to his partner, who was looking half ashamed and half deliciously scandalized at being forced to overhear this essentially family disagreement. "Your pardon, Miss Peckham. I'm suddenly finding the air rather thick." He shot a look at Arabella and their (so Slim assumed) mother, nodded briefly to his father, and pushed his way through the press of dancers, heading toward the three doors that led from the drawing room to the conservatory. Slim's head turned to follow his friend's progress; his unusual height made it easy for him to keep track of Quentin as he vanished through the nearest of them.

Marjorie's hand tightened on his sleeve. "Go after him," she said softly.

"I shouldn't—"

"Go. Please. You know you want to, and—and I want you to. I'll be all right. I've got a dance coming with Mr. Bainsley, anyway."

He hesitated an instant, but it warmed him that a woman would understand what a man felt he owed to a comrade; so often they didn't, even out West. "I'll try not to be long," he promised, and slipped quickly through the whirling couples.

The conservatory was an oblong room a little shallower from front to back than the drawing room, its axis at right angles to that of the main house, with a three-sided bay, about fifteen feet across, protruding from its streetside end; two walls of this, and the entire front, were glass, while the other walls—the rear one faced north—were solid, though overlaid with an iron-crested glass roof. Like all conservatories, whose high humidity would quickly destroy conventional upholstery, it was furnished in wicker and cast iron. The cunningly arranged islands of potted greenery made it seem to have quite a lot more private space than it really did, and offered all sorts of small nooks for couples wanting a few quiet minutes together; Slim had been thinking of slipping off in this direction with Marjorie at some point. He found Quentin almost immediately—not in the room proper, but in a tiny shallow vestibule that projected from it in the angle by the drawing-room wall, leaning against the door that led out to the garden, his forearm braced against it and face turned to the wood.

"Are you all right?" Slim asked, taking care to keep his voice level and quiet.

Quentin's head snapped up; at first his chocolate-brown eyes blazed, but when he saw who was there the anger drained out of him. "You heard?"

"I'm surprised you didn't see us," Slim told him. "Or that the whole party didn't hear you."

"I suppose you'd like an explanation," said Quentin resignedly.

"I sort of think you owe me one."

Quentin sighed and was silent a minute, thinking. "It's only two blocks to Madison Square," he said. "The Fifth Avenue's bar may not be quite as good as the Metropolitan's, but it's a lot quieter than the one in the Louvre, and we won't be expected to dance. I need a drink. See if you can find our overcoats. I'll wait here."

Fifteen minutes later they were seated in a quiet corner of the elaborate hotel barroom, whose forty-five-foot counter was manned by three white-jacketed 'tenders, with a bottle of good Carstairs whiskey between them. This was an era when drinking was, for the most part, a male prerogative: perfect ladies barely touched their lips to a glass of sherry, and, not to offend their modesty, gentlemen took refuge in their clubs or in bars like the Metropolitan's, where Jerry Thomas, the "king of bartenders," operated, or the Gem Saloon on Broadway, which boasted the longest mirror in the country. Here gin slings, mint juleps, sangarees, timberdoodles, sherry cobblers, blue blazers, hot buttered rum, and other refined and comforting drinks awaited them. "Well," Quentin began, "how much do you already know?"

"That you have a sister named Arabella, a father and a mother. That your sister was engaged, or somethin' like it, but it fell through, and for some reason connected to your enlistment. That your father didn't approve of you signin' up." He looked questioningly at his friend. "Why didn't you trust me with this? You knew mine wasn't overcome with delight when I decided I had to join the Union forces."

Quentin took a quick, short gulp of his drink and made a face. "It wasn't about trust, Slim. Believe that, because it's true. It was just that... that I didn't like to relive it. If I'd known they'd been invited to this shindig, I'd have begged off, but Uncle John and Aunt Alice didn't tell me."

"Maybe they didn't know," Slim suggested. "It's a big house; it can hold a lot of people."

"There's that," Quentin allowed. He sighed, took a smaller sip, and put the tumbler down firmly. "There are eleven of us; we came along every nineteen months, regular as clockwork. I'm the oldest, then Arabella—she was just nineteen when the war broke out; she'll be turning twenty-two in March. After us... there's Jared, and Thaddeus, and then Miranda and Leatrice and Bianca; then two more boys, Adrian and Lionel—he'd be almost eleven, and Diantha's nine, and Maude's the baby, seven and a half. Our house is about the same age as Uncle John's, finished in '33; at the time it was daringly far uptown—on Bond Street just south of Eighth. Every one of us was an individualist and an extrovert; we fought like wildcats, but we were intensely loyal to one another."

"And your father?"

"Elias Hubbell Colville," said Quentin in a faintly bitter tone of voice. "You wouldn't think, to look at him, that he'd gone to sea as a merchant sailor when he was twenty, would you? But he found banking a lot more congenial. He draws an annual salary of something like $33,000. The funny thing," he added, "is that he's really a patriot, as he understands the term. He's sold bonds to finance the Union war effort ever since the first issue. He just doesn't see any reason for—for people like us to give blood and sweat; he thinks money's plenty."

Slim waited. "He never seemed to mind, when we were young, that we were distinct personalities and had our own ideas about what we ought to do," Quentin went on. "Maybe it just never occurred to him that we wouldn't stay children forever. But by the time I started at Columbia, it was plain that we were heading for a war, no matter whether you claimed it was about slavery, or states' rights, or what. Father thought it was foolishness—" Slim remembered what he'd been thinking about the night after the Bainsleys' party— "and that sensible minds in Congress should be able to work something out, but—maybe because of being younger, and having more recent experience of hotheadedness—I knew they wouldn't. I joined the militia when I was eighteen—it didn't mean any more than a few hours of drill every week, and he couldn't very well forbid me; half his friends' sons were in one outfit or another by then, it was almost seen more as a social thing, like their fathers' clubs, than as any indication of an intent to fight. When I graduated it was 1860 and the election was five months away, and... well, you remember the way the South was talking. Then came Sumter, and..." His voice trailed off.

"And you wanted to get into it for real and certain."

"That's right. Of course like everyone else, I thought it would all be over in six weeks, or maybe a couple of months at worst. Oh, we had a couple of real tail-twisting fights about it, Father and I. Finally—this was early in May, right after the President had issued his first call for 42,000 ground volunteers—I said I was going whether he liked the idea or not. He said I was still under twenty-one—I didn't have my birthday till August—and not legally my own master. I said anyone over eighteen could enlist, parental permission or no. He said if I did he'd disinherit me. And I said, 'All right, do your worst!' and went up and packed my trunk. I don't think he really expected me to call his bluff, but once he saw me dragging it down the stairs, he couldn't back down; we all led him such a life, being the people we were, he probably figured the younger ones would be even harder to control if he didn't step on me pretty firmly. Arabella was already being called on by Parker Haberman, who was—is still, as far as I know—an elected lieutenant in one of the infantry outfits, and she was old enough to marry without consent; I don't think he liked the idea of a daughter of his living on a junior officer's stipend, and still less the prospect of having to take her back and support her if she ended up a widow... Anyway, I hailed a cab, caught the Fulton Ferry, and an hour or so later was standing on Uncle John's doorstep; I'd always been close to him and his family, more so than to any of my other relations, and I guess I headed there out of reflex, or maybe instinct."

"And he did what he threatened to?" Slim prompted. "Your father, I mean."

"I got a note from his lawyer a week later; I guess Uncle John or Aunt Alice had let him know where I was staying. And I had to stay there for a couple more months, because you remember what it was like, right at the beginning: my militia outfit was a mounted one, mostly young men attending Columbia or not long out of it, well-fixed enough to afford horses and sabers, and we weren't called on right away. The Union had five regiments of Regular Cavalry, and a sixth was soon added, but Washington thought that would be enough; no volunteer cavalry was called for, and would-be cavalrymen were turned down at the recruiting stations. Then the Confederate horse did so well at Bull Run and the battles immediately following that the Union decided it needed volunteer as well as regular cavalry to meet the enemy on equal terms. A call went out for thousands of us, including my old outfit, the Columbia Horse. In July, when Colonel Davies was authorized to form a mounted regiment, I was one of the first men standing in line at the Manhattan recruiting station to sign up for Company A. We went out to Scarsdale to organize and train, and since anyone from my level learns how to ride well, I was voted a lieutenant right off." He shrugged. "And that's pretty much the whole sordid story. Soon after we left the state, in October, I got a letter from Aunt Alice; Parker had asked Father for Arabella's hand, and nearly gotten himself thrown out of the house for his trouble. Arabella shut herself in her room for three days, crying and refusing to eat, insisting she'd have him whether or not, but she finally gave in. Jared and Thaddeus are old enough to join up now, twenty and eighteen, but neither one's dared say a word to suggest they want to—if they want to."

And I thought Pa and I had gotten into it, Slim told himself. At least he never threatened to cut me off. "Does this have anything to do with what you said that first day we rode down to Atlantic Avenue?" he asked. "About

a ranch job probably not suiting a married man? About—what was it—having your eye on someone?"

"Has everything to do with it," said Quentin. "I've got a college degree, but outside of the Army I'm not really trained for anything. I could go into a bank or a brokerage and learn on the job, but I have a notion none of the ones in the city will want to risk making an enemy of Father by taking me on. So it's either transfer to the Regulars—if I can retain my commission—or get something like the cashier's job at Stewart's, which pays good money, eighteen hundred a year, more than enough to support a decent middle-class lifestyle, or else go through a few years more of training, law or engineering or something, like I said that day. Or maybe now, with Marcus out of the picture, Uncle John would take me into the shipyard, though I'd have to work my way up, learn how the business runs; I don't have any summer experience with the place, like Marcus did. I've got $5000 that my grandfather left me, and $1800 that I saved out of my allowance in college, which would be more than enough to to start a home in one of the little towns like Flatbush or New Utrecht or East New York—land's still cheap out there, only about six to twelve dollars an acre unimproved, where a house lot near the river, like Uncle John's, runs five dollars the square foot. I could build and furnish a comfortable six-room house for $1600, have five acres or so of ground, keep a cow and some pigs and poultry, a garden and a small orchard, and have money left to put aside for emergencies. But," he said with a sigh, "I wouldn't want to make her wait for two or three years while I learned a profession, and then maybe as much again while I got established, and I don't think a man should take a wife unless he can give her better than she had growing up. Marjorie's already gone through the country life. I'd want to provide better for her than that."

"Marjorie!" Slim echoed, in shock. "It's Marjorie you've had your eye on?"

Quentin fixed a firm gaze on him. "Since the first day she walked in the door, though she was still in mourning then, and of course I couldn't say anything. More after I spent two months sitting around the house waiting to get a chance to participate the way I'd planned to, and found out something of the kind of person she is. But the way things stand now, it's just not possible. I've been watching you, and I can see you... care for her. She deserves more than anything I'd be able to do for her at some hireling job, but you have the prospect of a partnership with your father, a chance to build something, something to build it from, and your mother and Jonesy to be company and take some of the workload off her and help teach her how to run a household, not that she probably doesn't have a fair grounding in it already. I know you'll be kind to her and give her the best life you can."

Slim was stunned. "If I'd known—"

"—No," Quentin interrupted, "don't say it. I don't hold you any ill will, Slim—please believe that. How could I, when I never said anything to you—or to her—to make my feelings plain? A girl can't be expected to wait forever for a man, least of all when he's never declared himself, or even done anything that could be interpreted as courtship; I expect she thinks of me as—at best—an older brother. I hope we can all remain friends—though I warn you, if I ever hear you've made her unhappy, you'll be seeing me."

Slim thought of what Marjorie had told him that first Sunday, walking back from church: about her own feelings for Quentin, about her conviction that "he didn't like her." But he does, and he didn't feel he had a right to speak up, knowin' how she grew up; so he doesn't have any idea that she loves him. 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave...' he thought. He looked down at his untouched tumbler of whiskey, lifted it and tossed off half the contents in one gulp. He coughed and wiped his eyes and said, "When your uncle told you about Marcus, about what he had in mind—"

Quentin nodded. "It hit me pretty hard. Though Marcus at least deserved what he got; he's lucky not to be in jail for forgery. It's strange, the way the two of us both ended up in pretty much the same position—although I very much doubt Father would offer him a place to stay the way Uncle John did me."

"And so what happens now?" Slim asked.

"What I said. She's a wonderful girl, Slim; she'll make you a fine wife, and your family will love her—how could anyone not? And I'll make some kind of life for myself, maybe out West, and find a girl of my own; she won't be Marjorie, but I wonder whether anyone ever really marries the first person they fall in love with—I think, maybe, the first time is supposed to be just for practice, so you can learn how to know the feeling when it comes." He reached for his watch, squared his shoulders and finished his drink. "We'd better get back. Uncle John and the rest will be wondering where we've disappeared to, it's almost three miles down to the Battery, and the ferry stops running at midnight; we won't exactly turn into pumpkins if we don't get there before that, but none of us came out prepared to spend the night in a hotel."

The Fifth Avenue's bar opened off one side of the opulent lobby, its archway half shrouded by potted palms, velvet draperies, and ornamental columns and cutwork; the gaslights were still lit, but there were no guests about at this hour—most were probably either up in their rooms or still at whatever functions or amusements they'd had in hand for the evening. Quentin stopped Slim with a hand lightly against his chest at sight of the two men standing before the clerk's grilled lair. One was a wiry, dirty-blond fellow in a black planter's hat, brown corduroy trousers showing beneath a warm wolfskin coat; a gold ring set with a fine jade stone showed on one hand as he pulled off his rough, untanned-deerskin winter gloves. The other was Marcus Bainsley, in the same tall, shiny silk hat and dramatically overcaped coat he'd been wearing when he left his father's house for the last time, though looking somewhat older and more haggard than he had then. The clerk said something, and the two men turned toward the stairs, ignoring the sleepy uniformed boy standing beside the iron-grille elevator. Neither had any luggage.

Quentin frowned. "Now what's Marcus doing here? I'd think he'd have pretty well used up whatever he had left of his last allowance, and a single room in this place costs five dollars a night."

"Looks like he's made a friend," Slim observed. "Maybe they're sharing."

"Two-fifty's still quite a bit," said Quentin. "Twenty dollars since he was turned out, and that doesn't count meals. He'd be better in a boardinghouse, some are only twelve dollars a month. Although I'll grant you, that fellow does look the kind who'd be found in one of Morrissey's establishments—probably tending bar."

"They didn't see us. Let's go," Slim suggested.

A snatch of speech drifted down out of the stairwell as they passed it—Marcus's voice, Slim thought: "...Woody will..." It faded, then was answered by one that might have been Midwestern, perhaps southern Illinois: "...take care of you—if..." None of it was in any way suspicious, or even very comprehensible, but knowing that Quentin had a much greater familiarity with New York ways and prices than he did—what would a bartender make in this city, he wondered—Slim couldn't help filing it away mentally for future reference.

The night had grown colder, and a bitter wind sliced down Broadway. Quentin turned up his collar. "It's going to storm," he said. "Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but it's gathering up a good one. Snow maybe, or sleet."

"Morrissey," Slim murmured. "I've heard that name somewhere, and not from you. Or read it."

"If you follow prizefighting at all, I don't doubt you have," Quentin agreed, as they set off down Fifth Avenue. Less than five years earlier, he explained, in 1859, John "Old Smoke" Morrissey, who had been six years world heavyweight champion at the time, had met John "Benicia Boy" Heenan on an island in the St. Lawrence River, eighty miles from Buffalo; he won, but retired permanently after the fight, and Heenan assumed the title of "National Champion." Morrissey, then twenty-eight, moved into the gambling business; he settled in Saratoga Springs (he had grown up in Troy, just to the south, having been brought to America as a toddler), where he opened a "faro saloon," soon following it with a branch house in New York City. He had tight connections with Tammany Hall, as most of the successful Irish did, and the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country were said to be among his patrons. "Last September a fellow named Pablo de Arieta lost $9000 at his Saratoga place," Quentin said, "and shortly after that he dropped another $14,000 at the one in Manhattan. You see why I called Marcus's losses small-time."

"Chicken feed," Slim agreed. Then: "Do you know the Roosevelt family?"

"Know them? I'm related to them, rather distantly, through Mother; they're old-line Dutch, and there's a good bit of that blood in her family, two or three generations back. Why?"

"Oh, your uncle introduced me to Theodore Sr., earlier this evening. Marjorie said something about his brothers-in-law being Southern—something of an embarassment to him, she said..."

Quentin chuckled wryly. "They are, or at least I'd bet money on it. I've made a few connections in Federal intelligence the last year or two, so I've picked up a bit more than most men of my rank might. The younger one's a midshipman in the Confederate Navy—on the Alabama, I've heard—and the older one, James Dunwoody Bulloch, is a Commander, but he spends most of his time in England; the Pinkertons think he may be a secret service agent for Richmond, maybe even the financier of covert Confederate naval operations within the British Empire. Mostly acquiring ships for blockade-running, and cargoes for them to carry, the way I've heard it."

Dunwoody, thought Slim, remembering that snatch of talk he'd heard. Woody? No, that's too fantastic even for coincidence. And what interest would a Confederate secret service agent have in Marcus Bainsley? Quit it, Sherman, you're imagining things.

And you never did get around to askin' Marjorie what you planned to...

By the time they got back to the party it was too late to mend the omission; John Bainsley was already rounding up his womenfolk and trying to find out where Slim and Quentin might be. As it was, they barely made the last ferry back to Brooklyn.

The next day was Friday, a cold, gray, grim-looking day, but Everett and his brothers pleaded to go skating in the afternoon just the same. Lydia and Eleanor claimed they were exhausted, but Marjorie agreed to take the boys on condition that, if it started to sleet, they would turn homeward immediately. Slim had spent an uneasy night, not sure whether it was because of Quentin's revelations or something else; he felt a need to get out in the fresh air, maybe clear his head, maybe at least get tired enough to sleep better, so he offered to go along so they could use the carriage. He'd been on the ice barely an hour before he turned his ankle painfully in going over a rough spot—not a sprain, he thought, but severe enough that he decided he'd better sit down and rest it.

From the bench he chose, he could look to the left—approximately southwest—past Governors Island and down Buttermilk Channel; to the right—east—up the East River and past the curve where Wallabout Bay took a chunk out of the Brooklyn shore; or straight ahead to the East Side docks, about 600 yards away and quite distinctly visible in the sharp, clear air. Only about a hundred yards more than I figured it was from Manhattan to the outer ends of the Navy Yard, he thought idly. Then: You might not be able to do much damage to the place from there, but you could probably get a fair notion of the layout if you had a spyglass. And if you had a friend or two who'd been lookin' at it with another one from Fort Greene Park—or maybe somehow gotten onto the roof of one of the big rowhouses along the edge; nobody would see him there and wonder what he was so interested in—then you could get together, compare notes, make a sketch of it...

You're gettin' fanciful again, Sherman. You've seen the walls and gates they have to protect the landward side.

Wait a minute...

What if you didn't try to go in by the landward side? What if...

What if you just happened to know that a man who'd worked summers since he was fifteen in a nearby civilian shipyard had just been cut off by his father? What if you offered to make good on his gambling debts if he told you anything that might help you make that quarter-mile crossing? Gambling debts aren't legally collectible, they're obligations of honor, that's all... but Morrissey was a prizefighter, he might have threatened Marcus with bodily harm if he didn't cough up...

Quit speculating. It's guesswork.

But it makes sense. That fellow with Marcus sounded like he came from southern Illinois—and bein' out of Hancock County myself I should know that accent when I hear it—and a lot of Southerners settled down there, especially after California and Kansas took so many people out of the state. They even voted with the solid South in the elections of '54; I was only eleven, but I remember Pa talkin' about it, about how Illinois was gettin' just as sharply divided on a small scale as the country as a whole.

So say you're a Confederate spy out of that part of the state. Say you've been assigned to do some mischief to the Navy Yard, or at least try to figure out how it could be done. Say you've had your eye on the place for at least a month or two, and it's come to you that it would be a lot harder for the Navy to keep a small force of saboteurs out of the property if they came in by water than if they tried to do it by land—all the more if they made their move at night. Say you've got connections in Tammany Hall—Edgar MacCaig said they were probably tied in with the Confederate sympathizers in New York—and you hear about a certain shipbuilder's oldest son gettin' in hock to John Morrissey. You've seen, as Edgar did, that swimmin' or even floatin' downriver, at this season, would be takin' your life in your hands, and while you may be willing enough to risk your life for your cause, you'd a lot rather risk it after you're in a position to do what you've been assigned to. And in any case, with the two shorelines squeezin' the river at that point, a swimmer might not even be able to get ashore where he was aimin' for; he could overshoot and be swept out into the harbor. But a man, or men, in a small boat...

Like a little skiff that just happens to be tucked under one of the Bainsley docks... a little skiff that Marcus Bainsley probably knows all about...

The exchange he'd overheard in the Fifth Avenue Hotel lobby sounded in his ears again: "...Woody will..." "...take care of you—if..."

Mr. Roosevelt's brother-in-law is James Dunwoody Bulloch, Quentin said. Suppose he got a British passport under the Dunwoody name—or the Confederate government arranged one for him? Quentin said he was deep into ships and cargoes for the blockade trade—and Edgar said the Yard's buildin' a lot of cutters to keep them out. What would be more natural for a man in that position than to want to destroy or cripple the Navy's ability to blockade the South? If that blockade could be put a stop to, if the South could get the munitions and food and equipment it needs... it could still win.

Suppose Marcus was askin' somethin' like, "Do you really think Mr. Dunwoody will do what you say he will?" And the fellow from down Egypt-delta way said, "Don't worry, he'll take care of you—if you can provide him with the information he needs."

He stared across the river, eyes narrowed against the wind. It's logical. Maybe a little far-fetched, but logical.

The thing is, who would you tell? Brooklyn city police? Kings County sheriff? The Army at Fort Hamilton? And would any of them believe you? You've got no solid proof...

Maybe you can get some.

He stood cautiously, testing his ankle. Sore, but it would hold his weight if he didn't try to move too scanned the ice for Marjorie's mulberry plush costume, Glengarry cap, and froth of bright-colored petticoats. There—and she's just turning this way. He waved his hat to get her attention and saw her brake skilfully, pause, and head for the edge of the ice in quick strokes. Favoring the ankle, he headed down to meet her.

"Is your foot worse?" she asked as she reached the rink's rim.

"No, it's—well, it hurts, but I've been a lot worse off on the range. Can you get the boys home by yourself? I have to take the ferry over to Manhattan."

"Manhattan! Whatever for?"

"It's a long story, and I don't want to take the time for it just now," he said. "Can you?"

She thought. "We can walk up Doughty Street to Columbia Heights, and from there it's only two long blocks to the foot of Montague Street. It's almost three-quarters of a mile, and mostly uphill; they'll be tired, but from the way the weather's looking, it's going to storm tomorrow, and they don't have lessons on Saturday anyway. I can send Quentin down to get the carriage. I'll get them together and get started. But what shall I tell the Bainsleys?"

"Tell them... tell them I'm chasin' a maverick. You remember when I taught the boys that word. I should be back in time for supper, but don't wait for me if I'm not; there have to be places down along the Battery where I can get something to eat."

She looked at him steadily with her penetrating gray eyes. "This is something important, isn't it?"

"More than you could possibly guess," he agreed.

"Go, then. And be careful," she added softly, before turning away and skimming off over the ice in long strokes.

**SR**

He knew pacing wouldn't hurry the ferry any, and it would only hurt his ankle, but keeping from it was one of the hardest tasks Slim had ever set himself. Once he reached Manhattan, he caught a Broadway horsecar and tried to distract himself from what seemed its crawling speed by deciding exactly what he needed to find out and how he could do it.

At the Fifth Avenue there was a difficulty. Slim was accustomed to Western and Midwestern hotels, where the register book was left out on the counter and all you had to do was engage the clerk in talk, or distract him, or at worst wait till he went to use the outhouse, and look for the name you wanted. But in a high-grade hostelry like this one, the book was inside the grille that protected the clerk, the till, the pigeonholes, and the safe from possible holdup artists. He didn't like to lie and he wasn't especially good at it, but by now he was so convinced that his logic was on target that his face had gotten hard and taut with worry, and when he identified himself as "Lieutenant Matt Sherman, currently on detached duty with Union intelligence," the clerk took one look at his expression and his eyes and backed down. It probably didn't hurt that he shared a surname with one of the Army's better-known generals; the man didn't say so, but Slim bet himself a dollar that he figured the only reason a junior officer would have an assignment like that was that he was related to someone famous.

He'd guessed right. A man signing himself J. Dunwoody, Atlanta had checked in Wednesday morning and taken one of the single rooms. Of course a man's birthplace didn't determine the side he fought for; thousands of Southern loyalists had joined Union regiments—the First Texas Cavalry was composed largely of German-Americans and the Second of Mexicans, and a company raised in the Midwest, as Slim had personal reason to know, normally included at least one man born in Virginia and frequently had representatives from two or three other Confederate states. That was probably the chief reason that Southern spies could operate as freely as they did up North; if they said they were Unionists, who could prove otherwise?

"This Dunwoody—is he still here?" Slim asked.

"No, Lieutenant, he checked out this morning."

Might have figured on it, Slim told himself. Once he talked to Marcus—with whatever his footsoldiers have found out about the Navy Yard, that was all he needed. Wish I could have gotten my hands on him, but if wishes were wings we wouldn't need horses. "Did he ask you any questions while he was here? Not the kind you're used to from guests, like when the streetcars run—anything out of the ordinary."

The clerk frowned in thought. "Well, yes, there was one thing. Some speculator is putting up a block of rowhouses just over into Murray Hill—around Park and West 35th—and they've been using Giant powder cartridges to blast out the cellars; Manhattan's solid rock, you know, and a lot of it lies pretty close under the surface. Mr. Dunwoody must have had better hearing than most of our guests, because Wednesday evening, on his way to the dining room, he asked me what the noises were that he'd been hearing. I told him about the blasting, and that seemed to satisfy him."

Giant cartridges, Slim thought, having had some acquaintance with them, as with faro, in Colorado. If the construction project is ongoing, odds are they've got a cache of the things in a shed on the site, probably with not much better than a dollar padlock to secure the door. Fuse too. "Thank you," he said, and went out to walk the two blocks over to Park Avenue and catch a second upbound streetcar rather than subject his sore ankle to another two-thirds of a mile or more of foot travel.

It turned out to be more: the conductor was familiar with the construction project and told him it was at West 39th, not 35th. Dunwoody does have good ears, Slim thought; that's eleven blocks—just under three-quarters of a mile. Since it was Friday, and the weather not at all promising for tomorrow, the crews were on the job, pick-and-shovel men cleaning out broken rock and loading it into wagons for removal. The foreman was Irish, like most construction workers, and he was in a fine redheaded state of temper: apparently some twenty Giant cartridges, along with 200 yards of safety fuse, had vanished out of the storage shack overnight. "Have you reported it to the police?" Slim asked him.

The Irishman looked at him as if he didn't have all his sense. "Faith, Lieutenant, and why would I be wastin' me time doin' iny such thing? Powder cartridges ain't like horses or jewelry; one looks just like the next. Thefts the like of this are a thing ivery construction site lives with. I misdoubt but soon or late it's hearin' from the stuff we'll be."

Sooner than you think, I'll bet, Slim thought. Now he was sure he was right—but he still didn't have any proof. Two hundred yards of fuse. Safety fuse burns at eighteen inches a minute—if they put the same length with each charge, that's ten yards per... twenty minutes till they blow, that's long enough for the men to get clear, especially if they've got a boat...

Odds are they'll wait till night... they can use the buildings and shadows for cover, and they won't have to worry about bein' discovered by yard workers, only sentries. Now, how will they get into the Bainsley yard? Landside, most likely. Marcus would know all the routines... they might even force him to go with them; the watchmen would recognize him...

I need to get back and tell someone, even if it's only Mr. Bainsley.

But by the time he took two streetcars back down to the Battery, the promised storm had begun: a bitter pecking of sleet riding a raw wind straight off the North Pole. The ferry labored into the headwind and river current as it worked its way past Piers 15 through 21. They won't try it tonight, Slim told himself. They can't. This stuff could put half their fuses out in no time, not to mention that the visibility will just get worse after sunset; they might not be able to find the landing spot they want.

At the Brooklyn landing he was hailed by a familiar Irish brogue. "Mister Slim! Get ye in me cab before ye're takin' of yer death, and I'll be fetchin' ye home. Mister Quentin was afther tellin' me to wait till ye came, even if it did be takin' ye till last ferry out."

"Declan? Is that you?" Slim clambered into the light two-wheeler, which, like every other vehicle in New York at this season, had been remounted on runners. The gray Cearul must have had cleated shoes put on, for he took the slope well, only slipping a few inches now and again.

By the time the cab pulled up at the Bainsley carriage-block, Slim had made a decision. Disowned or not, Marcus was still the Bainsleys' oldest son, and Slim still didn't have anything that remotely resembled proof. He couldn't destroy every memory the young man's parents had of him, not on what was admittedly a pretty shaky chain of logic; he was convinced he was right, but that wasn't enough.

MacAlister refused his attempt to pay the fare. "Faith, sir, Mister Quentin's took right care of me, and gin'rous too, the fine young gintleman that he is."

"If you say so," Slim agreed, too preoccupied to argue. "But, listen: can you pick me up here about... oh, an hour after sundown tomorrow? That's if the storm ends beforehand. If not, make it the night afterward."

"Shure an' I can that," the cabbie said at once. "Where is it ye'll be goin'?"

"Not far, but you might bring a bag of oats for your horse," Slim told him. "Now get along home and get you and him under roof before this storm gets any worse. I'm not used to your Eastern winters, but I know a bad north wind when it hits me in the face."

"Small the doubt," Declan agreed. "Slippery as a fish, it's getting. I'd not wonder would we have a coat of ice from here to Bushwick by tomorrow midnight. Slape ye well, sir." He drew the whip lightly over the gray's back and the horse put its head down and set off.

Not likely, thought Slim, watching the cab disappear in the thickening weather.

**SR**

"What took you over to Manhattan?" Quentin asked when he walked into the library.

Slim hesitated, looking around. "Where is everybody?"

"Aunt Alice had a meeting of her lady volunteers for the Sanitary Commission," his friend said. "Terrible weather for it, but it was set weeks ago, and she had to go. Uncle John's still at the yard, I guess, and Marjorie's upstairs with the boys, and I think Lydia and Eleanor are in the sewing room looking over patterns, trying to decide what to do with those other lengths of satin Lydia got at Stewart's. Why?"

"Because—" He gave it just another few seconds' consideration, then plunged. "Because I think I'll be needin' some help. And I don't want any of them to know about it, not yet."

Quentin's head tilted. "What have you been up to, my friend? You look like half Manhattan fell on you while you were out."

Slim sat down, pulled his chair close, and began to recount his reasonings and discoveries of the day. Quentin listened without interrupting, as if he saw how deadly serious his friend was. "If they took twenty cartridges," the rancher finished, "I figure there have to be at least ten of them. I'm not stupid enough to think I can handle that many by myself. I need help, and I know somethin' about how good you are in a fight."

Quentin whistled softly. "Twenty cartridges? My Lord, they could take the whole yard down with that many. The drydocks, the machine shops, the storage warehouses, maybe even any ships that are in for refit."

"Exactly my point," Slim agreed. "But since Dunwoody, or Bulloch, or whoever he was, has slipped through my fingers, and I don't see how I could find Marcus's—friend—in a city the size of New York, I don't have any solid evidence to offer the Navy, or the police, or anyone in between. The only chance I've got is to catch them in the act and try to take as many as I can in talkin' condition."

Quentin nodded somberly. "You're probably right. Well, you made a good choice recruiting Declan. His brother's a Brooklyn cop, and I happen to know he carries a pistol and can use it; in his line of work he often has a fair amount of cash with him by day's end, which makes him a tempting target for toughs and robbers, not to speak of the value of his horse. I think he's got a shillelagh tucked away alongside his leg, too. That's three of us. If you think these Rebs plan to get into the Navy Yard by way of Uncle John's property and one of the skiffs, we'd better figure on following the same route. Farquhar MacCaig and his sons might be a lot of help."

"I hadn't thought of that," Slim admitted. "Do you know where they live? Maybe we could pick them up on the way."

"They own a double house on Adams Street, on the edge of German Town, just outside that solid factory district right across from the shipyards," Quentin told him. "Edgar and Valentine and the other younger ones are still living with their parents in one side of it; Malcolm—the oldest—is married and has the other. It wouldn't be too far out of the way."

"Six against ten," said Slim. "I've seen worse odds. All right. And I think," he added, looking grim, "that after supper you and I had better clean our revolvers."

**SR**

In the morning it was still sleeting. Slim and Quentin, after discussing the possibility while they got dressed, decided they should leave word with someone of what they guessed and planned, just in case, as Quentin said, "something goes wrong." But neither was willing to hurt John and Alice Bainsley by explaining how Slim had made the connection, so in the end they agreed on Marjorie, probably because each of them was convinced she loved the other one, and so deserved to know why she might never see them again after tonight. After midday dinner they caught her on the way out of the dining room, retreated to the pantry, and there filled her in—though without reference to Marcus; Slim was still hoping to keep his name, and the Bainsleys', out of the whole business.

Marjorie had apparently decided, on the basis of Slim's comments at the ball, that red hair was nothing to be ashamed of after all, and had dressed hers in a style from late in the last decade, with wide braids in coronet style; since this wasn't a day to make or receive calls, and the weather was too terrible to take the boys out, she was wearing a bolero-like Zouave jacket in a beautiful shade of purple, with three-quarter sleeves and military braiding, over a ruffled white blouse and gray merino skirt. She listened gravely to what they had to say and only made one rather feeble attempt to persuade them to call in official help, but seemed to understand why they felt they had no real option except to handle the matter themselves. "When should I...?" she began.

"If we don't take them down," said Slim grimly, "the powder they took will be enough to shake the city all the way up to here. You'll know."

"They won't move against Bainsley Yard till it's properly dark," Quentin added. "They'll want to make sure nobody but the night watchmen is still there—or in the Navy Yard either. Then allowing time for them to get the skiff, find a place to land, and set their charges, they're probably planning on blowing the place around eleven or twelve. So either way, you won't hear from us much before two, if then. With luck, we'll be back for breakfast, or at least we'll be able to send word that we're all right."

She nodded; her face was pale and her gray eyes shining with emotion, but there was only a little tremor in her voice when she said, "All right. I'll wait till after breakfast to say anything." Then she reached out with both hands to take one of each of theirs. "Please be careful," she said, and that was all.

She may be a city girl, Slim thought, but she's got what it takes to live on the frontier, even if she doesn't realize it herself. I might never have known that, if I hadn't figured out this plot. If I come through this thing in one piece...

The sleet finally stopped falling around three o'clock, but the weather immediately turned sharply colder; within another hour or two the city was covered with a glittering sheet of ice that made the streets as treacherous as skating-ponds. Slim and Quentin quietly smuggled their overcoats and pistols down to the half-basement and hid them in the pantry. Sundown was just a little past five, so Declan was due to pick them up around six—well before suppertime. They slipped out by the door that let out from the delivery passage to the front areaway. MacAlister and his cab were waiting. " 'T'is a foul night indade," the Irishman observed, "and like to get little better if it's me that's any judge. Be ye gintlemen certain ye're wantin' to go out?"

"He ought to know," said Quentin.

"You're right," Slim agreed, and in quick strokes he filled the cabbie in on what they suspected.

"Alanna machree!" Declan exclaimed when he was done. " 'T'is the blessin' of the blessed saints that I've me pistol and shillelagh to hand. Well, any man of sense would far sooner be takin' of his comfort by the fire in such weather, and it's me that's seein' plain ye're not likin' of it that ye daren't, but we wouldn't want that them Seceshes should be desthroyin' of half the waterfront. Indade, Mister Slim, I'd the notion yesterd'y that there was that that was eatin' at you. It's Declan Ossian MacAlister that's yer man, gintlemen, and we've our work to do, so step ye in, and it's us that'll be puttin' a stop to these bodachs."

"Us and the MacCaigs," said Quentin. "We'll stop by their house on the way." He gave the address as he and Slim got settled, and the gray horse set off, stepping carefully in his cleated shoes.

The MacCaigs' house was a good two miles from the Bainsley yard, but barely half a block from the streetcar, which ran till ten o'clock every night. Farquhar and his two oldest sons, Malcolm and Edgar, listened in astonishment as Slim laid out what he'd guessed. "Get ye along," the man said, "and we'll follow as fast as e'er we can gather our guns and coats and the keys to the yard gates. Do ye park your cab on Wythe Avenue—that's a block back from the waterfront—and we'll find ye."

"Father," said Malcolm, "what of Valentine?" And Slim remembered that MacCaig had a son by that name who was working as a night-watchman at the yard.

"He's not on the gate tonight," the older man said, "so it may be he'll be safe till we get there. But we maunna waste time, lads."

**SR**

Leaving Quentin and MacAlister with the cab to wait for the MacCaigs, Slim did a quick scout—as quick as he could considering the treacherous footing—and satisfied himself that there were no other cabs about in which the saboteurs might have arrived. It wasn't till much later that he learned that most of them had been staying in Brooklyn all along, scattered out among various boardinghouses, and had arrived within sight of the Bainsley gates by ones and twos, quietly, so as not to attract attention. At the time, he hoped there might be a chance they hadn't arrived yet. But that hope was soon brought to naught, for when MacCaig unlocked the gate and they slipped inside, they quickly found the gate guard lying beside his little sentry-box, dead. "It looks like they bashed his head in," said Slim. "There's not much foot traffic in this part of town after six—even I can see that—but they wouldn't have wanted to chance one of the other watchmen hearin' a shot."

"We'd better pick up some bull's-eye lanterns from the storeroom," Quentin suggested. "We may or may not need them here, but I'm pretty sure we'll have use for them once we get over to the Navy Yard, especially if we plan to look for charges."

MacCaig gave his keys to Edgar and had him go for them, telling him to meet them by the dock where the skiffs were kept. Using the yard buildings for cover, the other five moved as quickly as they could toward the river.

It was Slim's expedition, and the Cheyennes and Flint McCullough had taught him something about scouting, so he took the lead, and consequently it was he who nearly tripped over something soft and yielding near the corner of the last shed they passed. "Hold it," he whispered, and fumbled for his match safe as he knelt. His searching hand told him what it must be even before the match flared into life. The dead man was no more than a youngster, a boyish-looking redhead wearing woollen gloves and a long brown overcoat with a tam and muffler of the blue-and-green Farquharson tartan, a metal badge on the former, its quartered shield supported by a pair of Highland wildcats each with a forepaw upraised. With a sinking heart, Slim turned. "MacCaig—you'd better see this."

The Scotsman's breath whooshed out of him as if he'd just been slugged in the belly. "Ah," he groaned softly, "ah, Valentine, ma braw laddie..."

Quentin came up behind him. "Club again?" he asked.

"No." Slim's match had gone out, but he'd already seen everything he needed to. "There's blood on the front of his coat. Somebody threw a knife, would be my guess. No Southerner feels dressed unless he's got at least one on him somewhere. Look—his pistol's in his hand. He must have caught sight of 'em, challenged 'em, and one of 'em took him down."

"We'll take two for him," growled Malcolm. "Father... come, we've still a task before us."

Edgar caught up, with half a dozen bull's-eyes, as they were drawing the second skiff out from under the dock; the first was already gone. There was no need for the sail: they eased out into the current, using the oars, and let it take them on from there, until they were past the island at the mouth of Wallabout Bay. Then Malcolm and Edgar took the oars again, their father grasped the tiller, and they slid silently across the flow and headed for the westernmost of the naval drydocks. A few dim lanterns—riding lights and binnacle lights—gleamed from the tied-up ships; presumably there was a watch on board each, but on a dark, windy night, a low-built boat would be almost invisible, and no one challenged them.

Quentin had gone forward into the bow with the mooring line. "Take it easy," he called softly. "Look—there's the other skiff."

They tied up beside it and clambered up onto the dock. "All right," Slim began, "we'd better split up. They're probably workin' singly or in two's, and we'll have the advantage of surprise. Get as far inland as you can and work back this way, and check every important building for sign of a fuse burnin'; if you find it, just pull it out and throw it away. And remember, we need to keep it quiet; if they hear a shot, they'll suspect somethin's up—not to mention the sound might draw sentries and give us a lot of explaining to do that we don't have time for."

"Somebody'd better stay with the boat," Quentin suggested. "They'll have to come back here to get away before the charges go up."

"You're right," Slim agreed. "And odds are they've already planted some on these drydocks, so whoever does that can look around for those too. It was your idea, Quentin, so you do it." He held up a hand to silence his friend's protest. "You and I are the only ones of us with any military training. I'd feel a lot better if I knew you were here to catch any of them that we miss."

"And if we should be afther findin' one of the rapscallions?" asked Declan.

"We've got to take at least one or two alive," Slim told him. "There may be more conspiracies like this one afoot that they can point the authorities to—and even if not, we'll need to have somebody who can confirm what we're doin' on Navy property with guns at this hour of the night. But remember, they've got nothin' much to lose. They're spies, and twice murderers; they're all facin' a noose. They won't hesitate to kill—we've seen that already—and I'd bet they've got guns. So shoot if you have to—but only if you have to."

There was a mutter of comprehension from the others, and they split, fanning out and using the night itself for cover. It was as black as the inside of a jug, and stormy; any sentry who had any respect for his own health would be keeping indoors as much as he possibly could, and the sergeant of the guard too, probably. So what am I doing here? Slim asked himself, and answered the question immediately: My duty. And he remembered Reverend Beecher's sermon on his first Sunday here.

He found the first cartridge against the wall of what seemed to be a blacksmithy; as he'd hoped, even in the dark, the short jet of orange flame marked out the burning fuse. He darted forward, zigzag in case one of the saboteurs was watching, and stomped on it. He didn't dare take time to fumble for his watch, but he knew this meant time was running out. If the fuses were already being lit, and his party missed one, it could mean death or severe injury for one or more of them, not to mention the damage to the yard. He looked around quickly and found a second big red cartridge, but on this one a small crimp in the fuse had caused it to misfire and go out. The fact that the man who'd set it hadn't stayed to make sure of it, and to trim it and fire it again in just such a case, gave him some reason for hope. They were probably putting two cartridges on each target, one for a backup; if both went off, so much the better, but if one didn't, the other would do some pretty respectable damage by itself. And that, in turn, suggested that he'd guessed right and his party was dealing with, at most, ten men. He pulled the fuse out, just in case he hadn't completely destroyed the spark, and dropped it a few feet away. All right, he told himself, one down. Now where? Machine shop would be the most vital target... He scanned the rooflines of the buildings, remembering what he'd already seen of a working shipyard on his tour of the Bainsleys', and picked it out by its tall smokestacks. At least I hope that's it...

The wind was picking up, blowing fine spume over the yard from the river and the bay; its deep rumbling covered the sound of his footsteps. Might well cover a gunshot too, if it didn't blow the bullet off course, he thought. He was passing a big storage shed when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and whirled, almost skidding on the ice-covered ground, his hand slipping under the deep cape of his overcoat for the pistol he'd thrust through his belt. "Who's there?" he barked. "Come out with your hands up!"

A bareheaded figure in a caped coat not unlike his own separated timidly from the wall of the shed. "Sherman?" came a tentative voice through the wind. "Is that you?"

"Marcus!" he hissed, and tightened his hand on the Remington. He hadn't figured the eldest Bainsley would take a personal part in the raid, but he'd hardly gotten to know the young man and couldn't really say what his politics were. "What are you doin' here?"

"They forced me to come," Marcus told him. "I thought they'd just tie me up and leave me in the office once I got them into the yard, but they put a gun on me and brought me along. When they split up Haxley took me with him, but I got away in the dark while he was setting a charge."

"Haxley? Is that the one who was with you at the Fifth Avenue Hotel?" Slim guessed.

"How did you know that?"

Slim made his decision quickly, almost intuitively, without thought, as he would another, even more important, some half a dozen years hence. "No time to go into it right now," he said. "Listen: one way or another things will blow up around here in pretty short order. Head for the wall, get over it, and lose yourself on Sands Street. Find a seamen's boardinghouse where they won't ask any questions and hole up. As soon as the ferry starts runnin' tomorrow, get over to Manhattan, pick up your trunk, and get on the Oceanus for Providence. Even if we take Haxley alive and he names you, that should confuse your trail for a day or two. From Providence you can get a train to Albany, from there to Buffalo, and from there a steamer across the lakes, and after that the world is yours. Go to Chicago, or farther if you can raise the fare. Just get as far away from here as you can. And keep away from faro—unless you're dealin' it; it's only six hours a day, and you can make ten to twenty-five dollars a day for it, plus twenty per cent of your winnings."

Marcus gave him a wide-eyed look of wild uncomprehending relief, turned and fled. He knows, Slim thought, watching as the young man's shape blended with the shadows. Haxley probably meant to leave him here dead, with a bullet in his back—make it look like one of the sentries caught sight of him and picked him off, or like he was one of the party who tried to chicken out and got shot for a traitor. He's probably got some kind of papers on him that would lead the police, or whoever, to his parents—that would delay the investigation long enough for the rest of them to get over the river to Jersey City and out the other side.

But I can't let the Bainsleys face that kind of disgrace—or know what he did. He's been turned out, cut off; they'll expect him to go... somewhere... to try to make a new life for himself. It won't seem strange to them if they don't hear from him for a few months.

I've got to find Haxley...

He just heard the footstep behind him in a second's lull in the groaning of the wind, and whirled. A bundled shape in a dark, broad-brimmed hat—he remembered the black planter's hat Haxley had been wearing at the hotel—was racing toward him with a Bowie knife in its hand. He sidestepped, thrust out a foot, and his attacker tripped and went sprawling, losing the knife, but scrabbled up again, feet slipping on the icy ground, and launched himself at the rancher. The force of his flying weight knocked the air out of Slim's lungs and flung him backward; he tightened his grip desperately on his Remington—it was the only weapon he had—and swung his left arm crossways, aiming for the side of the other's head. They both crashed to earth, scuffling untidily in the ice and the slush beneath it as their weight broke through the top layer.

Slim's blow missed; he shortened his angle and struck out at the other man's midriff, jolting him. Before he could draw his arm back for another blow, a sinewy hand caught hold of his wrist and held on; from the way it pushed, it was Haxley's left. He struck out with the Remington's barrel, trying to hit the man's shoulder and numb the arm enough to break his grip. Haxley ducked, and the gun swished over his head; Slim kicked and got him in the thigh as he half turned. Then his right came into view with another blade in it—a boot knife, maybe. It drove down and Slim felt the steel slide through his thick overcoat and the tunic and shirt under it to the flesh just below his armpit. He rolled, tearing it out, feeling the warm explosion of blood, and just as he came to a stop, belly down, in the slush and started to crank the sixgun around, gasping as the motion pulled at the wound, another dark shape appeared behind Haxley's back. "Drop it!" someone shouted.

Haxley jerked, scrambling around on one knee, flipping the knife around in his hand and snapping it back over his shoulder for a throw. But the other man had a gun, and he fired as he saw the movement. Slim didn't see where the bullet struck, but he saw Haxley's other hand fly to his right side, high up, just before he fell back motionless.

"Slim? You all right?"

"Quentin? You were supposed to stay with the skiff."

"You should be glad I didn't," his friend told him, squatting down beside him. "Declan came back with two he'd found—got them with his shillelagh. I left him on guard and came looking for you. I don't intend to go back and tell Marjorie you've gotten yourself killed. How bad is it?"

"I don't—don't think—it hit anything vital..." Slim was feeling more than a little nauseous as the first shock wore off. "I'm bleeding, but—my clothes should catch a lot of it—" He got his legs under him and struggled to a sitting position. "I think—I think you just got—Marcus's contact—the one we saw the other night—"

"Did I?" Quentin turned quickly and knelt beside his victim, opening the slide of his bullseye to examine the face. "So I did. He's got a hole in his shoulder, but he's alive."

"We may not be, if—if we don't get movin'—there's probably a charge by the machine shop—"

"Don't worry about it," Quentin replied. "There were two, but that's why it took me so long to get here. I got just a glimpse of him as he moved away from the building, but I saw the fuses too, so I had to stop and disarm them."

That's four, mine and his, Slim thought dizzily, and probably four Declan would have neutralized... three saboteurs out of action, that leaves seven, and twelve charges ... "What about the docks?" he panted.

"Safe. You were right. They'd left a couple of charges on each one, with fuses ready to go—probably planning to light them just before they shoved off for safety. I found them with my bull's-eye and pulled the fuses out. Then Declan showed up, and you know the rest." He reached down and caught hold of Slim's uninjured arm, helping him to his feet. "Can you stand?"

"I'll make it," said Slim, through clenched teeth, "but what about him?"—with a nod toward Haxley. Make that six charges...

Quentin snorted. "He's already wetter than a frog; I'll drag him. Come on, let's get you out of the wind somewhere."

**SR**

Marjorie Herrington had spent a long, sleepless night; she'd gone up to bed at her regular time, but remembering what Quentin had said about the probable planned time for the explosions, she'd been unable to rest, and finally, around eleven-thirty, she'd gotten up and settled in her rocking chair near the single window of her little hall bedroom, which looked as much in the direction of the Navy Yard as any window in the house. She might not be able to see the explosions—if they took place—from here, but she supposed they'd start fires that would create an aura of light, even if she didn't hear them go off. Time seemed to crawl with glacial slowness; when the sweet-toned French bell of her gilt-trimmed pink porcelain clock chimed midnight, it already seemed as if it should be near dawn.

She thought a lot about Slim and Quentin as she sat there, wrapped in her brocade winter dressing gown with the lace and velvet trimming—about their selfless patriotic courage, about the cleverness with which Slim had reasoned out what was going to happen, and from there, gradually, about their relative merits and her own feelings toward them. She wasn't so blind that she couldn't see Slim's attentions for what they were. She supposed that men in the Army had little opportunity to meet attractive young women, although she'd read in the illustrated papers about vivandières and "daughters of the regiment" and visiting officers' wives and local girls, and she thought it likely that he had started out simply wanting to make the most of her presence in the house where he was guesting, but the many things he'd said about his family, their ranch, and the West generally had shortly made it clear that he was thinking of her as a possible wife. Whether she would make him a good one, given the life he lived, she wasn't sure. She knew she liked him: he was tall and strong and handsome, and he spoke to her as if he thought she had a brain. Certainly she was concerned for his safety. But as the hours dragged by she found her thoughts returning more and more to the friend who had offered to go with him as much because he felt that was what a friend should do as because he considered it his duty as an officer and a loyal American. It was sometime around three that, without warning, she suddenly realized that, while her apprehension for Slim was real, imagining what could have happened to Quentin made her quite miserable and afraid. It was a new sensation to her; she had feared for him before, of course, just as his aunt and cousins had, but never in quite this way. The intensity of her feelings shocked her at first, then filled her with a glowing warmth. It came to her that she had been deceiving herself. She had been so thoroughly convinced that he didn't care two pins for her, that she'd somehow given him offense, that she had tried to suppress her own feelings for him, out of the practicality of which she was so proud; yet she knew now that it didn't matter, that she loved him as she would never be able to love Slim Sherman. This was a new experience for her, this intense interest in a man, so different from her last-remembered girlhood romances. But she was still not certain of how he felt. Was it possible she had been mistaken? Could he have had some reason for trying to conceal his emotions too?

Come back, she thought, not sure which of them the thought was meant for, come back so I can be sure...

At seven, with the rising sun's glow just beginning to show in the east and the bells of the Catholic churches chiming for first Sunday Mass, she got her clothes out of the cherry chest, and once dressed she woke Charles and Hiram and John Jr. and started them getting ready for the day. When the family assembled in the dining room, John and Alice Bainsley were plainly becoming concerned for their nephew and his friend, who had now been missing for almost fourteen hours. "Where can they have gone?" Alice wondered. "With this terrible footing, they could easily have been in an accident."

Marjorie had said she would wait till after breakfast, but she knew she couldn't prolong the agony of the couple who had been so good to her. "I know where they went," she declared, and instantly every eye at the table—even that of Sheila, the kitchen-maid, who doubled as waitress—turned to her. She told them what she knew, trying to be as concise as she could.

John Bainsley immediately pushed his chair back. "I'm going down to the yard," he said, in a tone that dared anyone to object. "We know there were no explosions; Marjorie would have seen the glow of the fires. So they must have been in time to stop the sabotage, but that doesn't mean the Navy understands the situation."

"Of course you must go," his wife agreed at once. "Sheila, get Mr. Bainsley something he can take with him to eat on the way."

"Aye, mum," the girl murmured with a bobbed curtsey, and scurried out through the butler's pantry.

The rest of the family—the little boys always had Sunday meals with the rest—listened to his footsteps as he rapidly climbed the stairs to the parlor floor, then, after a pause, to the sound of the inner and outer foyer doors opening and closing. Past the edge of the stained-glass "picture window" they could make out the shadow of his legs as he set off along Montague Street. "Mama," Lydia ventured, "must we go to church? Papa might miss them; they could be on their way home now. If they come and we're not here, and Martha and the girls are off at Mass, how will they get in out of the cold?"

"I think," said Alice, "that today the Lord won't mind if we do our praying here."

They finished their breakfast—"One way or the other, we must keep our strength up," Alice urged—and went up to the library for a quiet family service of prayers both formal and personal and hymns accompanied by Marjorie at the piano, then settled down and tried to keep themselves occupied with suitable Sunday diversions. Everett appointed himself sentry and settled down in the front parlor, by the windows, where he could watch the street and sidewalk. Nobody spoke, and the regular ticking of the old Dutch clock on the mantel sounded like the footsteps of Death.

It was around ten-thirty that Everett came racing in. "Quentin's here! He's just getting out of Declan's cab!"

Marjorie felt a great, overwhelming rush of joy and relief—which was almost immediately swamped by guilt at the thought that she hadn't even considered why Slim wasn't with him. Everett had pelted out into the hall to open the door for his returning cousin; they could hear Quentin's voice as he hung up his hat and overcoat. He was scarcely over the threshold when he was nearly overwhelmed by a stampede of welcoming women. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?" "Where's your uncle?" "What happened?" "Where is Slim?" The three little boys clung to his legs till he could barely move.

"Settle down, everyone," he said at last. "I'll tell you all about it, but let's sit down—it's a long story."

Alice sent Katie Rose down to the kitchen to get something for her nephew to eat. When they had arranged themselves before the library fire, he began recounting his news between gulps of steaming coffee and famished mouthfuls of thick bread-and-butter and veal-loaf sandwiches, ham-and-potato salad, hard-boiled eggs, mustard pickles, preserved peaches, and gingerbread with yellow cheese. "First of all, Slim's at the Naval Hospital getting stitched up; he had a fight with one of the saboteurs and took a pretty nasty slice under the right arm with a knife, but the surgeon seems to think he'll be right as rain in a couple of weeks. Uncle John's in with the Captain Commandant of the yard, or he was when I left. I sent Declan back there and told him not to come back without both of them."

He told them about the recruitment of the MacCaigs, about what they had found at the Bainsley yard and how they had gotten over to the Navy precincts and begun their search. "Malcolm got into a running fight with a couple of the Rebs—slipped on the ice and broke his leg, but he managed to bring them both down before they could get out of pistol range; they're dead. He and Edgar and their father, being so familiar with a civilian shipyard, were better equipped than the rest of us to guess which buildings would be the most vital targets, and between them they were able to find and disarm the rest of the charges. Edgar started one of the enemy out of hiding and ran him right into Wallabout Bay, but threw him a life preserver and hauled him back onto shore, soaked enough to take pneumonia, though he hadn't yet when I left; that one's in the prison ward of the yard hospital, along with Haxley, the leader, who's still unconscious. The other six are in the brig, including the two Declan whacked with his shillelagh."

"Did the Navy believe you when you told them what had happened?" Alice asked.

"It got pretty confused for a while there," Quentin admitted. "They found a couple of Marine sentries who'd been garrotted, and the garrottes in the pockets of two of the prisoners; that helped, and of course so did the fact that Slim and I were in uniform. But what settled the whole business was that in the bilge of the saboteurs' skiff there was a steel box, and inside it a lot of homemade gunpowder bombs. The way we worked it out, Haxley's outfit meant to set off their charges, then row around Wallabout Island and hurl the bombs aboard the ships tied up there while the boardship watches were all watching the commotion ashore. Wooden ships are dry as tinder, of course; they'd all have gone up in no time flat. With the way the wind was blowing last night, they might not have even needed to use all the bombs to set off a regular firestorm." He shook his head. "If it hadn't been for Slim noticing the things he did, and working it all out, and going over to Manhattan to look for the boss of the operation, we'd have lost ten or twelve ships, all three drydocks, and most of the major buildings in the yard."

"You're heroes, Quentin!" Everett exclaimed.

"Will you get medals?" Hiram demanded eagerly.

"Will you get promoted?" Charles added.

"Settle down," said Quentin. "The Captain Commandant will have to make out a report, and it will all have to go through military channels. We probably won't know before our leaves are up. But if we do, I'll write you about it." He yawned abruptly, barely managing to cover it.

"You've been up all night," his aunt realized. "You should try to get some sleep. We'll call you when the others get here."

"I'll take that," Marjorie offered, reaching for the silver tray on which his refreshments had been brought up. As he stumbled sleepily out to the hall, she followed, leaving the family excitedly rehashing what they had just heard. "Quentin?" she called softly.

He turned. "He's all right, Marjorie," he said wearily. "He told me himself, it didn't hurt nearly as much as the time his horse fell with him and broke his leg when he was fifteen."

"An injury doesn't have to hurt to be serious," said she, "but that's not what I wanted to ask you. Why are you—have you been—so angry with me all this time? From everything I've learned about you, listening to Lydia and Eleanor and your aunt, holding grudges isn't like you."

"Grudges?" he echoed, his brows knitting in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"

"You've been avoiding or ignoring me for most of four years," she said. "What else am I to think except that I've done something to offend you? And it must have been something terribly serious or you wouldn't still be punishing me for it after all this time."

"Ignoring you? Is that what you think I've been doing?" He looked completely astonished. "I couldn't ignore you if I tried. I've never been less than... painfully aware of your presence in this house. As for punishing you, I'd never dream of it."

Can that mean what it sounds like? she wondered. No—it can't possibly. He's from one of the oldest families in Manhattan; he could have any girl he wanted. Even if his father has cut him off, just the connection would be enough to recommend him to any Knickerbocker family in town If he's got no fortune or prospects of his own, a father-in-law would certainly give him a place in the business. What would he want with a girl who has no connections, not even a dowry, just a few pieces of furniture, some books and her clothes? She kept her voice even with an effort. "The main question remains, and you've made no attempt to answer it: why were you, or are you, angry at me? Tell me, and I won't do it again."

"I don't want to talk about it," Quentin retorted. "As we both know, it doesn't make a particle of difference any more. You've made it clear how impossible it would be to have any close relationship between us. I tried not to believe it, but now I know you were right. You're far too good for me, and you knew it long before I did."

"And that's how you want it?" she asked softly, her nerves thrilling at that last sentence.

"What an odd thing to say!" he exclaimed. "My inclinations have never been considered before. Why are they under investigation now?"

Marjorie laughed—part self-mockingly, part in joyful relief. How can two intelligent people be so blind for so long? she wondered. "Through some oversight I neglected to notify you that I've been reassessing the situation—for much of the night, as it happens."

She saw the disbelief in his eyes give way to a tentative hope. "When will we know the results?" he asked, as if inquiring about election returns.

"A few of them are in now," she said. "But I never knew you cared so much, till now. Or that you cared at all. You've never spoken."

"Good Lord, girl!" he burst out. "Where are your eyes?"

"Looking for something they couldn't find till this minute." She put the tray down on a papier-mâché table inset with romantic scenes in mother-of-pearl, and smiled.

He took two tentative steps, then bolted forward to meet her. She came to him then, with warm, eager arms, and they clung together in the shadow beside the stair, until she was all limp, and he had to hold her upon her feet and speak softly to her. "I didn't know," he said quietly. "Will you ever forgive me?"

"Only if you'll make it mutual," she replied. "I can't believe neither of us saw it for all this time. So many years we've wasted..."

"Fruit needs time to ripen," he pointed out. "Eat it when it's green, it's hard and upsets your digestion. Wait till it's come to its peak and it's sweet and full of juice. Marjorie... will you marry me?"

"The very day you come home from the Army for good," she promised.

"It doesn't matter that I've got no prospects? That all I have to my name is something under seven thousand dollars, my brain, my two hands and my willingness to work? That we'll probably have to live in a boardinghouse at four dollars a week while I try to learn a profession?"

"I'm a good manager," she reminded him. "We'll get by. You can read law, and I can sew or something, and then we'll go out to the country and you can hang out a shingle. It won't take you any longer than law school would, and you can earn while you learn, so we won't starve."

"Are you sure?" he pressed. "I wouldn't mind if you wanted to stay on here for a year or so while I studied, and save your money..."

"I don't want to lose one more minute with you than I have to," she said firmly. "I wouldn't wait another day, except that I know your aunt and the girls—and my sister—will want to have time to arrange a proper wedding and get gifts together."

"I hadn't thought of that," he admitted with a smile. "I've already alienated one family, I don't want to do it with two more." He sobered. "And Slim?"

"He's a fine man, and your dear friend, and for that I'll always love him. But not as I love you. I knew all along that I never could; I just didn't know that I knew, not till last night."

"That's all I needed to hear," he whispered.

**SR**

Declan and his cab returned a little before two, with Slim and John Bainsley as instructed, the rancher wearing an overcoat borrowed from the major who commanded the Navy Yard's Marines, since his own was direly in need of laundering and repair. His right arm was in a sling, and though he'd had a few hours' sleep in the hospital, he still looked a bit pale. Bainsley and Declan helped him up the front steps, and Alice Bainsley immediately greeted them with, "You're just barely in time for dinner. Both of you get right downstairs; Martha will let you clean up in the kitchen. And as for you, Declan MacAlister, when did you eat last?"

"I'd a peck at the free lunch in one of the saloons on Sands Street, mum," the cabbie replied, hastily doffing his jaunty brown beaver hat, "but apart from that, divil a bite have I tasted since dinner yesterday."

"Then you get downstairs too, and tell Martha she's to give you the same as we're having. Go! Your family will wait."

"Aye, mum," the cabbie agreed, and followed Slim and his host.

**SR**

"There's something I ought to tell you," Quentin said that evening, as he got undressed in the bedroom he and his friend had shared for the last three weeks.

Slim, leaning back against a stack of pillows in the big Belter bed, smiled sleepily; the Navy surgeon had provided him with a bottle of paregoric for the pain—"I don't think it will bother you enough for laudanum," he'd said—and it was already taking effect. "I wasn't that far gone at dinner, even if it didn't seem I had much appetite, which I didn't," he said. "The way you and Marjorie kept sneaking looks at each other across the table, I could tell. You looked just the way my folks do sometimes."

"You're not...?"

"No, I'm not," Slim said firmly. "Remember what you said? 'Maybe the first time is supposed to be just for practice, so you can learn how to know the feeling when it comes.' Thinkin' it over the last few hours, I know I wasn't really in love with Marjorie at all; if I was, it would hurt a lot more to know you two have come to an understanding. Besides," he added briskly, "I'm really too young to get married yet. I realize that now. I want to put in a few years helpin' Pa build our place up before I start seriously lookin' for a wife. And I don't think we'd really be right for each other. I can appreciate her, but I wasn't raised the way you were; I can't give her the things you can." He extended his good hand. "Since I doubt you've told anyone else yet, let me be the first to wish you well."

Quentin's smile could have lit any three streets in Brooklyn. "Thank you. We'll name a son after you. If it hadn't been for you pulling me into this operation, Marjorie might never have realized how she really felt—or had the courage to ask me how I did."

**SR**

Four days later Slim and Quentin were aboard a train heading south. Slim's arm was still in a sling; Bainsley had taken him to see on Monday, and again the previous afternoon, and Osgood had pronounced him healing nicely, though he'd recommended that the limb not be used strenuously for at least another week. "Your regimental surgeon can take the stitches out when the time comes," he'd said. Meanwhile the rancher's color was back, he'd acquired the raging appetite of a convalescent, and Mrs. Bainsley had pressed a huge lunchbasket on them, "so you don't eat the poor train butcher entirely out of his stock," she'd said.

"You were asleep when I came upstairs last night," Quentin observed, "so you wouldn't know. Uncle John and I had a long talk. He's definitely going to set up that joint-stock company he mentioned; his brothers are interested, and most of his friends, and Mrs. Bell, and Thee Roosevelt. He talked to Mr. Holton about it at the club the other day."

"That's good," said Slim. "Where are they thinkin' of investing?"

"They're sort of torn yet," Quentin admitted. "Maybe Montana, maybe the Comstock. But they won't start till after the war ends. They want me to be their representative on site, you see." He grinned. "They'll pay me $3500 a year, which is as much as I could earn as a lawyer starting out, and I won't have to wait a year or two to begin earning it."

"That's a nice income," Slim observed. "Enough to support a family in good style. A lot of cattlemen don't see that much in a year, not in cash, at least."

"I know," Quentin agreed with an impish smile. "And Marjorie will go with me. We settled that this morning."

"Did you tell your aunt and uncle yet?" Slim asked.

"I'll write them in a month or so," his friend replied. "That way they'll have time to get used to the idea before I get mustered out."

"I'll expect letters myself," Slim mentioned. "Just address them to me care of Fort Halleck; we send a rider down there from Dancytown for the mail every couple of weeks. Ma says they had to shift the stage route south—the Sioux are causin' so much trouble that Fort Laramie's not safe to go to."

"Count on it," Quentin promised.

**SR**

It was gathering dusk when they rode into the camp in Stafford County. They stopped first at Slim's company captain's hut to report him as returned, and learned that Army dispatches had already informed the man—and Colonel Barton—of their recent adventure. "You're excused from all duty till you're out of that sling, Slim," Captain Cassington said; like most CO's of volunteer companies, he'd been elected by his men and still felt close to them. "Colonel's direct orders. And he'd like to see you in the next couple of days—at your convenience, and after you've rested up from your trip."

"I'll try to make it tomorrow, sir," Slim promised.

"I'll let him know you're back," Cassington said. "By the way... I've got some news for you. Lieutenant Almássy went out on a routine patrol last week and got into a brush with what we think were some of Mosby's boys. He was wounded—bullet through his leg. He's in no danger, it was a good clean wound, but he's been evacuated to a hospital in Washington. Your boy Simon's been helping my orderly since then. I'll send him over in the morning, if that's all right with you."

"I'm afraid I'm definitely goin' to need his help for a while, Captain," Slim admitted, with a rueful look at his arm.

Cassington clapped him lightly on his good shoulder. "Get out of here. It's almost time for mess. Get some food in you, then go have a good night's sleep. Oh, yes, and I think you had a letter last mail call."

"Only one?" asked Slim quizzically. "I'd figured two or three, at least; I haven't heard from Ma since October."

Cassington shrugged. "Oh, you know how mixed up the post office gets. The rest will catch up; they always do."

He found the letter on the shelf over his cot; one of his fellow officers must have taken it in charge. The postmark was December 2, but that didn't mean Ma had written it then, since it wouldn't have been stamped till it got to Fort Halleck. He thought about opening it, then decided he was too sleepy to take in her news; the long rail journey and the forty-plus-mile ride from Washington had drained his recovering body of much of its energy. It's waited this long, it can wait till morning, he decided, and set about trying to get undressed with only one useable arm.

**SR**

Colonel George Barton's enlisted orderly knocked on the door of his hut and put his head in at the officer's brusque response. "Lieutenant Sherman to see you, sir."

Barton automatically fished out his watch. "So early?" he said; it was barely nine A.M. "Send him in."

Slim stepped in with the grace and quietness of foot that always surprised his C.O. in such a tall young man. "Lieutenant Sherman reportin' as requested, Colonel," he said. "I apologize—I can't salute—"

"Understood, Lieutenant. I'm aware of your wound, as you probably know. At ease. Sit down, for Heaven's sake. Coffee? You look pale."

"Thank you, sir." Slim settled himself in one of the folding canvas camp chairs and waited politely while his superior took the coffeepot off the Sibley stove and filled a couple of thick china mugs.

Barton was fifty or so, an inch and a half under six feet, though his sturdy, compact build made him look shorter; he'd been born, coincidentally enough, in the Bronx, where his father had been a hard-working and successful shoe manufacturer. When the son was twelve or so, the senior Barton had acquired a contract to supply footgear for the infantry, and this had given him some influence in Washington. At nineteen, after two years of college, young George had attained a vacant second-lieutenancy in a Western regiment through these contacts, just in time to get in on the Black Hawk War, and he'd been Army ever since. Such was the distinction between Regular Army and volunteer rank that a captain of the former could be named brigade commander when a colonel of the latter was available—and colonels were known to resign over this. The lieutenant-colonel of volunteers who'd theoretically been next up to assume the regiment's command, after his superior was killed in a skirmish in September of '62, had done exactly that when Barton was bumped in over his head.

Slim respected Barton. The man had spent most of his military career fighting Indians, but he had never given way to the temptation to hate them. He often said that if he were an Indian, faced as they were with the loss of his lands, his livelihood, even his religion, he too would fight, and fiercely. He admitted that they were barbarians, and didn't fight by civilized rules, but he didn't hold them to blame for that; they were what their country and their history had made them. Like Sam Houston, whom he had met soon after the close of the Mexican War, he recognized that the Indian and the European didn't necessarily represent savagery and civilization respectively; the Indian simply had an entirely different view of life. But he also knew that there were two things Indians valued above all else: courage and honesty. He had always shown both in his dealings with them, treated them with honor, and kept his word to them, though he had no control over what his superiors did. He had stood against white trespassers on Indian lands, evicting squatters, trying to protect the tribesmen from the sharp practices of traders, and sitting patiently through lengthy councils, where he listened to Indian complaints and tried to administer justice. Even his two-and-a-half years campaigning against the hit-and-run tactics of the Seminoles, beginning in '35, hadn't poisoned his mind toward them. Rank and power in themselves meant little to him, but he had accepted promotion because he saw that it gave him better opportunites to see that they were decently used; a lot of officers were fifty before they made colonel, but Barton, thanks to his extensive combat experience, had held the rank since just before the war broke out, and was, in fact, a Brevet Brigadier General, though he refused to be addressed as such. He and Slim had talked often of the Western tribes, and Slim had shared the insights he'd acquired from his father, from Jim Bridger and Flint McCullough; had told of his Cheyenne friends, Thunder Coming and Blue Eagle, Runs Horses and Stands Shining, of how they'd met and the times he'd had with them, hunting wild horses, learning to track, exploring. And now that Barton was engaged in a war against his own countrymen, he continued to fight by his own personal code of conduct. He did it according to the same lines as McClellan—those which Lincoln had said the war was about. He fought to suppress the armed forces of dissident fellow-countrymen whom it was his duty and desire to return to a common Union. He didn't consider it his duty, and it certainly wasn't his desire, to make war on those civilians among his countrymen who differed from him on the interpretation of the Constitution—wasn't freedom of opinion guaranteed by that very document? He fought without hate, without cruelty, as if it were indeed a rebellion to suppress and not an alien people to conquer and despoil.

Slim's own ideas ran smoothly in double harness beside his CO's. Hurting civilians violated his ideas about protecting the innocent and about the high and virtuous role of a Union volunteer. And no purpose of uniting a people, white and colored, in one common country could be served by making the soldiers who represented this goal objects of loathing and bitter contempt, and the names of their commanders dirty epithets forever. Instead of resolving the inherent duality within the nation, such a tactic would only strike the heaviest and most lasting blow for continued division—perhaps not the actual political kind, but certainly psychological. Slim had resolved early on that while he would do as much damage to railroads, bridges, and other strategic targets as he possibly could, looting citizens' property and threatening their lives was disgraceful. He never made war on civilians, never conceived of himself as a god of vengeance or directed his men toward purposeless destruction of personal property. Burning crops, destroying homes, and inflicting suffering on women and children might be standard practise in wars between white and Indian, but it disgusted Slim that such war could be made on whites—fellow Americans.

Barton passed his visitor a mug and sat down behind his field desk. "Well," he said, "I've had some dispatches about you, Sherman. Secretary of the Navy seems to think you saved his entire Brooklyn facility. Want to give me the details?"

Slim hesitated. "If you don't mind, sir, there's somethin' else on my mind this morning. This letter—" he pulled the creased and crumpled sheets out of his uniform blouse— "my mother wrote it a good two months ago, but I only got it when I returned from my leave—nobody knew where to send it on." He laid it on the General's desk, a clear invitation to his superior to read it if he wished. "My father's dead, sir. Came home in November, half frozen and shot up... died less than a week later. She needs me at home, Colonel. There's no one else, except for neighbors helpin' out—and they've got their own places to take care of—and whatever passin' drifters she can hire for a few days or weeks or maybe a month or two. Just Ma, and my six-year-old brother, and Jonesy, who has a bad back. They need me, sir," he repeated.

Barton quietly took up the letter, unfolded it and skimmed quickly over it. "No wonder you look so shaken," he said, not without compassion, as he replaced it where Slim had put it. "Rough news to come back to after a leave."

"Yes, sir." Slim was sitting stiffly in the lightweight chair, resisting his body's desire to relax.

"I take it you're requesting another leave," Barton went on in his gravelly, slightly nasal baritone.

"I know it's irregular, sir. I wouldn't ask, but... it's my family."

"I understand that," Barton agreed. "I've got a family too." He glanced at the plush-and-silver frame that perched on the right front corner of the desk, enclosing a picture of his wife and two children, a daughter of twelve and a son of fifteen. He'd hoped that at least Lucy and her mother would be able to join him in camp this winter, but Fanny had caught diphtheria while nursing the girl through it early in December, and though she'd survived, her doctor had forbidden her to travel. "It couldn't be a regulation thirty-day leave," he mused, "least of all at this season. You'd have to get to Baltimore first; then you could get as far as St. Joe by rail, but that's more than a thousand miles, and with the shape the tracks are in these days, that alone could take as much as four days. No guarantee you'd even make it that far; they may have sawed West Virginia off from the Old Dominion last year, which means that the Baltimore & Ohio doesn't go partly through enemy territory any more, but that's rough mountain country, full of guerrillas, bushwhackers, and deserters who might take it into their heads to hold up a train for whatever they could get off it. Then you'd have to take a stage to Julesburg or Fort Halleck—I understand they've shifted the route south because of all the Sioux trouble; that's another four hundred to seven hundred fifty miles, which is two to four days even if the weather co-operates. And from there you'd have to get a horse and make the rest of the journey on your own."

"I know that, sir. It's why I didn't want to take the leave I was due for veteranizing; I didn't want to spend half or more of the time on the road."

"So," Barton went on, "what we'd be looking at would be a leave of absence, probably indefinite—unless I could get you transferred to one of the skeleton outfits still out there, and have you put on detached duty."

"I hadn't thought of that possibility, sir."

"Don't suppose you'd refuse the pay, all the same," Barton observed. "From what I hear, the winter's been shaping up pretty rough out there; Lord knows it's been no picnic here. And there's still two good months of it to go, plus your place is up in the Laramie Basin, isn't it? High country; your winter probably hangs on."

"Yes, sir. Our last frost averages around the middle of May, though most of the snow's usually off by mid-April, except up on the high peaks."

"Hard country," mused Barton, "but beautiful. I spent some time at Sedgwick just before the war broke out, did you know that?"

"No, sir." Slim's voice was tight, and he knew the Colonel could hear it, but this was beginning to sound to him like a delaying tactic, and he thought it fair to give the man some hint that common courtesy, at least, seemed to warrant a more definite response to the request he hadn't quite made.

"You're asking a lot," Barton said. "Though I'm sure you realize that."

"Yes, sir."

"Your family needs you, you say," the Colonel went on, "and I've no doubt they do. But I need you too, Sherman. A man doesn't get eagles on his shoulders without learning how to read men and where best to make use of them. You know, I think, that this war can't have much longer to go. It may even end before the election. The South is split in two, blockaded, slowly starving, wracked with inflation and internal dissension. And, I'm sorry to say, our army has deteriorated considerably since the draft went into effect. A lot of the men we've gotten this last year or so are street toughs or outright criminals, out for whatever they can get. I need officers who can control them, who understand that the more we allow the people of the South to be despoiled, the harder it will be to bring this country back together. You may be among the lowest-ranking ones I've got, which wasn't entirely my choice—I'd get you a promotion if I could, but so far there haven't been any openings, unless I jump you up over someone else's head—but you're also one of the best: that Western life you've lived has made you tough and clever, and your men respect you." He sighed and handed the letter back. "I'm sorry, Sherman, but in good conscience I have to tell you—I don't feel I can spare you. Take heart; you may be a civilian again in six or eight more months anyway."

Slim's good hand knotted on his knee, and a muscle bunched in his jaw. With an effort he kept his voice even. "I can resign, sir. The Army doesn't own me."

"No, it doesn't," Barton sighed. "And, yes, you can. And you don't need my leave to do it, because your oath is to the nation, not me. But I hope you won't."

Slim breathed in deeply. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't guarantee that."

"You're excused from duty as long as your arm's no good," Barton noted. "You couldn't write your mother till then, and travel would be pretty rough on you. Take a few days, at least, to think it over. If you still feel you have to resign, that's your decision to make, and I won't stand in your way."

"Thank you for that, sir," Slim replied quietly. "May I be excused now?"

"Go. Get some more rest, I can see that letter hit you like a charge of grape. Just let me know your decision before you make any definite moves—fair enough?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And—and I do understand where you're coming from, sir."

Barton held out his hand—his left hand—and they shook awkwardly. "You're a good man, Sherman. I think you'll make the right choice in the end."

**SR**

A light knock at the door of the hut roused Slim from a restless doze. "Who's there?" he called out.

"Me, Mist' Slim," came Simon's voice. "Got a letter for you."

What, another one? thought Slim. "Bring it in, Si."

The boy shyly eeled in, bundled in a homespun cassimere jacket and the sturdy brown lace-up boots for which Slim and Miklós Almássy had chipped in fifty cents each at the beginning of October, a green knitted cap pulled down over his ears and a matching wool muffler wound around his neck. "I didn't hear them blow mail call," Slim noted.

"Nosir, Mist' Slim. Cav'ryman done fetched it 'round special—had one of them dispatch cases." The envelope he held out was very plain, though of good heavy paper, and carried no return address—and no stamp, but if it had come by the Army dispatch system it wouldn't. The handwriting on it was unfamiliar:

2nd Lt. Matthew Sherman
Company B, 3rd Indiana Volunteer Cavalry
Winter Quarters
Stafford County, Virginia

"Open it for me, would you, Si?" Slim wasn't worried about privacy; like most former slaves, Simon couldn't read.

The boy reached into his pocket for the jackknife his two officers had given him for Christmas, slit the flap and reached in for the single neatly folded sheet of paper. Slim sat back slowly against the wall behind his cot and read:

January 29, 1864

Dear Lt. Sherman,

A report has been forwarded to me concerning the sabotage which was recently foiled by yourself and party. I desire to express my deep appreciation of your actions and your courage and quick-wittedness, without which the war effort of the United States might well have been irredeemably compromised. I sincerely wish that it were possible to publicly recognize your act, but the clandestine nature of the affair and the fact that you were technically not on duty at the time makes it impossible to award you the decoration you so richly deserve. I trust you will take comfort in the knowledge that you may very possibly have prevented a Confederate victory, and will accept as sufficient compensation the sincere thanks, if not of your country, at least of your grateful President,

A. Lincoln

The breath eased out of Slim in a long, slow sigh. Well, he thought, it's been a long ride, and it looks like it'll be a longer one yet. I can't go home, not after this.

They'll have to get along without me a while longer. Not too long, I hope. I can hope, can't I?

Carefully he refolded the letter, returned it to the envelope, and got up to slide it into his writing-case, where it would be safe from damage. Maybe he'd frame it when he got home. There probably weren't a lot of cattlemen, in Wyoming or anywhere else, who could say they'd had a personal letter from the President.

I'll write to Ma as soon as the doctor lets me take this sling off, but I won't try to tell her the whole story. I'll just say they wouldn't let me have any more leave. She'll understand, or think she does.

I'm sorry, Pa...

...Light one candle
for the terrible sacrifice
justice and freedom demand...
— "Light One Candle" (performed by Peter, Paul & Mary on the album Weave Me the Sunshine)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Note: This fic would not have been possible without David McCullough's (no, not that David McCullough!) excellent and thoroughly readable history of Brooklyn and How It Got That Way, or Charles Lockwood's Bricks and Brownstones, the story of New York's rowhouses from Revolutionary days till the 1920's. I must also acknowledge the entries on Brooklyn ferries, The Bohemian Girl, and the two Theodore Roosevelts at Wikipedia, and Streetwise Maps Inc., whose sturdy laminated quad-fold street map of the borough was an indispensable aid in figuring out where Slim was at any particular moment.

It was literally in reading Brooklyn... that I realized I might have stumbled upon the reason why Slim didn't go home after he got word of Matt's death. As Col. Barton observes, he could have taken an extended leave of absence, or resigned; he certainly would have had every right to do the latter—and military resignations are seldom denied, especially those of officers, and especially when family hardship is cited. When I first got the idea for the story, what I mainly knew was that I wanted Slim to experience something that felt to him like love, wanted his friend to have been disowned by his father for joining up, wanted their host family to include a college-age son who got into some kind of trouble, as young college men (some of whom were very young indeed; several noted men entered that phase at 14!) often did in that era. And I wanted a scene near the end where Slim and Barton would discuss his need to go to his family. But as I learned about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, its vital importance to the war effort, and the concert saloons and gambling houses of wartime New York, I began to see that I was onto something, that I could tie the college son to an enemy attempt on the Yard. Then, one morning, the letter from Lincoln seemed to pop into my head full-blown, and I saw that I had the answer. After being recognized at that level, how could someone as conscientious as Slim abandon his country when it needed him most?

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, under that name, is still a feature of the East River waterfront, though it was decommissioned years ago and is now undergoing private development. My description of it was taken from the Brooklyn Public Library's website, where, after several fruitless googlings, I discovered a PDF of an 1866 map of it.

There was indeed a Great Sanitary Fair in Brooklyn beginning February 22, 1864, held, as the story notes, in response to the challenge of Cincinnati's ladies. By the time it closed in March with a Calico Ball, it had well exceeded Cincinnati, raising over $400,000 for the cause—and before New York (which then meant Manhattan) had gotten around to organizing an event of its own.

John Morrissey, pugilist turned resort owner and politician, really existed; besides the accomplishments mentioned in the story, he eventually owned a total of 16 gambling facilities, including no less than five in New York City, one of which, established in 1866 in two buildings on 24th Street and Sixth Avenue, was said to be the most luxurious of its kind in town, and indeed reputed to be the most lavish in the world. In 1870 he built The Club House, which still stands, in Saratoga. Before his death at the age of 47 he made and lost several fortunes (he left an estate of some $2,000,000 (equal to about $46.9 million in 2012 dollars)), served twice in the State Senate, and was twice elected to Congress, thanks largely to his connections to Tammany Hall. Pablo de Arieta was another real person, who in May of 1864 filed suit against Morrissey in the Court of Common Pleas over his gaming losses, though as far as I've been able to discover it did him little good. So were Captain Molyneux and Mrs. Anna Bell; Mrs. Bell did become a successful broker and speculator in the wild financial climate of wartime New York, as did quite a few other women of means. (The family eventually moved to Albuquerque, where Captain Bell died in 1886 at the age of 60; 18 years later his body was disinterred and shipped for reburial to Green-Wood Cemetery, where his grave may still be seen in Section 11, Lot 5893. Mrs. Bell survived him by six years; daughter Florence died in 1870, but her brother Nelson lived to be 70, and probably had descendants.) And so were the Jerome and (of course) Roosevelt families (Jennie Jerome, Leonard's middle daughter, who was nine years old at the time of the story—and, as it happens, was born in Brooklyn, at her uncle's home in Cobble Hill; the oldest girl, Clarita, claimed Rochester, New York, as her birthplace, and the youngest, Leonie, made her debut in Paris—went on to become the mother of British statesman Winston Churchill, and her story can be read in Ralph G. Martin's two-volume biography, Jennie). Theodore Roosevelt's mother's brothers were indeed staunch Confederates (they both survived the war, and became expatriates in England afterward), and one of them, James Dunwoody Bulloch, was originally a U.S. Naval officer who did become a Commander in the Confederate sea forces, a secret service agent for Richmond, and the financier of covert Confederate naval operations within the British Empire; his chief activities had to do with the destruction of the U.S. merchant fleet and the procurement of ships and supplies with which to run the blockade, though some historians think he may also have been connected to the Canadian elements of the conspiracy to kidnap (in late '64) or (later) kill Abraham Lincoln. For that reason I decided to tie him into the attempt to destroy the Brooklyn Navy Yard—which, though it never took place in our reality, may well have done so in the Laramie Universe, where history was a little different. In a day when Social Security numbers, photo ID, and other privacy-busters didn't exist, and when (as the story notes) many Southerners-by-birth supported and even fought for the Union, it was very easy for spies to operate on both sides as long as they didn't act overtly suspicious—or to slip in and out of the country by way of Eastern ports or the Canada-U.S. border. (There are several fine studies of Civil War espionage available to the curious, including Harnett T. Kane's Spies for the Blue and Gray and Webb Garrison's Civil War Schemes and Plots.) A version of Hamlet that set the story within the frame of a Zouave regiment really was performed, and since Zouave regiments were most widespread during the war, I've assumed it could be viewed in early '64. The social background, from books and clothes to the behavior of "polite society," is as accurate as 45-odd years of research into the 19th Century can make it.