In truth Nate cared greatly, and would care more once he sorted it all out. During the wagon ride he had had leisure to meditate on what information he owned about himself. He had overheard Espey's expression of doubt he was who Jigger had said; instinct if not experience remaining, he had mistrusted Jigger anyhow. But the identity would do for want of a better. The months of servitude, though he would not have chosen them in his rightful person (he believed), would give him a place to be and a little cash to get on with, for he had none. Also, it would give him a duty to perform, which he needed: that much about himself he knew.
    He could not remember farther back than that morning, when he had woken in a place strange to him. His head had burned and throbbed at the back. Feeling it, he found blood, and found more of it on a chunk of stone a foot away. It must have fallen on him, or someone had struck him with it; perhaps he had been robbed. Checking his pockets, he found a view of a church and nothing else. His money was gone, if he had brought any. He realized he did not know if he had. He must search at home. Was he a stonecarver then? He realized he did not know that either. If it were, he was a stonecarver. He wandered into the building next to him and walked its length, studying the statues, gargoyles, fountains, and granite seats huddled together. He knew he could never have made them; his hands would have felt it. He did not know what he was or why he was here. All he knew was that his name–
    He realized he did not even know that. At the discovery the world seemed to tilt around him. He dropped onto one of the hard benches, and soon his perspective righted itself. But his plight was unchanged. As he sat thinking (and he sat a long time) he found he knew much, but none of it pertained to his person. Most of all he knew the woods. He could call up sensations to which the events that had given rise were lost yet he knew certainly they had happened in the woods. His identity, history, home, profession, the very business that had brought him there, all that side of things was a bright emptiness: one that maddened because, though it seemed at first a screen with the facts just behind, almost visible, yet when he tried to rip through he found it was not a screen after all but a depth unfathomable. The facts lay beyond or around it, only there was nothing beyond or around it; nothing at all.
    He explored the grounds and the buildings, moving from the storehouse to the factory and thence to the house. There was no food anywhere, to his regret, and no sign of recent habitation, which heartened him a little: he had been right to conclude he did not belong here.
    He set out on foot, following the river, and went a long way without seeing anyone. The farther he walked the stronger became the fear that had sprung up in him without his knowing. He had half-trusted that once he came out into the everyday world he would recognize it and awareness would return. But this country looked as unfamiliar as the kingdom of frozen shapes. Ahead were hills; surely on the other side lay some landmark he knew. But no; the vista beyond was the same as the one behind. He felt suddenly atilt again.
    Then he noticed a difference: a wagon, small in the distance, with figures around it. He shouted, though he knew they could not hear, and began to run, though his feet ached. He slowed to walking when he had to, resumed running when he could, shouting and waving–
    And so he was taken into the wagon. The driver was some sort of rascal, he saw, but the men seemed a decent lot and he was glad of their company. In his ignorance, to be part of a crowd afforded him some security; thus could he bear it, and thus fix in his mind his present circumstances. Whatever he might have been or done before, this he was doing now; this he could keep hold of as a fact.
    So, in the wagon. But here at the mine confusion had returned. He could make no sense of the place, its operators, or the chance that had brought him. The new enigmas had revived the larger mystery so that now he stood distracted, unable to think for the talk about him and unwilling to speak till he knew rightly what he was saying. Necessarily self-preoccupied, he could not grasp that his companions understood their terminus as little as he but, stupefied like every normal man by the remembrance of a lifetime's defeats, did not seek to understand.
    But, he learned, men will fight. One of the group, who had been studying the hill with a perplexity that had drawn him unconsciously away from the others to a better view of the side, asked where the furnace was. He addressed the question to no one in particular, but loud enough so all heard. "We have a small working, sir," said Bascombe. "There is no furnace."
    "How do you air it?" asked the man, whose name was Yarrow.
    Moyle smiled to see Bascombe fidget. With an air of patience he explained that there were two shafts front and rear. "'tain't enough," said Yarrow. "You want a fire to drive out the bad air."
    "He's right," said Espey, stepping forward. "Else the gases are poisonous."
    "Hear that?" said Riggs. "You'll not get me down there."
    Sewell spoke for the rest. "Nor any of us."
    Bascombe looked to the sheriff, who appeared embarrassed. "Come on, boys," he said, "this is what you signed on for. You may wish you hadn't now but that's nothing neither way. You try to back out, I'll have no choice but to take you in for breach of contract. That's a criminal offense."
    "No, it's not." This was Espey again.
    The sheriff turned toward him heavily. "Beg pardon?"
    "It's not a crime," he repeated. "It's a civil matter."
    "Barky pup," Moyle growled. "I'll show 'e."
    Case put out an arm to block him. "See here, Parson–"
    "I'm no parson."
    "Ain'tcha? You look like one." Moyle laughed and so did some of the guards. Hounditch joined in eagerly. "Tall collar or no," Case went on, "you're plumb wrong. In this county defaultin' on a contract's a serious business. Fetch you three months of jail time."
    "Druther be in jail," said Yarrow. He was seconded by most of the others.
    "I'm sure the judge'd be delighted to oblige. But, see"–he sounded almost apologetic–"all I got to do's recommend he put you to hard labor and you'll be back out here regardless. Only that way you don't collect no wages. That how you want it?"
    They were beaten and knew it. "Moyle," said Bascombe, "I put them in your hands." The utterance did nothing to relieve their apprehensions. They watched dolefully as the two owners mounted and took to the road.
    "So, me jennies," said Moyle, marching up the line like a cavalry sergeant addressing new recruits, "leave me make matters clearer so's to forby any–ructions." He grinned at the word. "For this threemonth I'll be 'ee's master–not Bascombe nor t'other gasser there, but me, Toby Moyle. Yon seam"–he indicated imprecisely with his thumb–"will yield twelve ton a day if you put 'ee's back to'n. And I'll see you do"–he clutched the blacksnake–"for certain sure. And mind! 'tes coal we're arter, not slate. Be owt of she mingled with'n, you'll sift she out 'eeself, nub by nub. So." The men eased at the last word, but he had not finished. "Any of 'ee think to fetch along pick and shovel?" Unsureness showed in their faces. He grinned again. "No mind, the comp'ny will provide. Which, added to 'ee's board and lodgin'–" Parson echoed the last word in a voice tinged with irony. "–lodgin'," Moyle repeated, staring hard at him, "imposes a consid'rable expense on the comp'ny, in respect of which 'ee's wages shall be 'eld back till 'ee's debt be paid."
    "Snake statement," Yarrow said knowingly. Someone spat.
    "Spit and growl at me all 'ee like. I pays it no more 'eed than I would the scrawin' of a she-cur at me back. But mark this–raise 'ee's 'and to me, I'll strike 'ee down where you stand. Shirk 'ee's labors, you'll get worse. Try and jump country"–for some reason he was staring at Nate–"and 'twell be the last run you make, for certain sure. So." Again the word heralded a change of subject. "Yon's where you'll bed." To their surprise he pointed out the stable. "Go shed they packs and return d'rectly."
    They went carrying their modest kits–all but Hounditch, who hung behind. "Well, scrawny?" Moyle said. "Didn't 'ee 'ear?"
    "Oh, yes, sir, indeed I did, I only–that is–"
    "Well?"
    Hounditch smiled as in apology. "I'm no great hand with a pick. Shan't pretend to be. But I can be useful in"–he paused significantly–"another way." On the verge of elaborating, he noticed Yarrow eyeing them from the stable door. After a moment he went in. Hounditch promised himself to return the favor one day.
    The stable lay just below the mine, dividing it from the shacks. Straw carpeted the dirt floor, which was all that was to be had in the way of beds. Each man claimed a square for himself and an Indian horse blanket from a pile beside the door. Nate took the space at the other side. Parson brought two blankets, one of which he dropped at Nate's feet and the other in the parcel adjoining his. The owners having taken no pains to adapt the building to the men's use, the floor still smelled of sweat, dung, and urine.
    Yarrow for one did not mind much; as he told the others, he had slept worse places. He did wonder where the crew had been barracksed while mules were stabled there: not at all, he guessed, or crowded into one of the shacks. In that assumption he did the sheriff, who had planned the camp, a small injustice: a bunkhouse had been intended but postponed, and a steady accumulation of supplies followed by the introduction of the guards (whom Case had insisted on calling deputies) had reduced the workers to one shack, which by then they had dwindled in number far enough to fit into.
    Riggs did not share Yarrow's stoical tolerance and loudly expressed his disgust. "May be our good fortune," said Parson. "I believe they hold mules in higher esteem than men."
    Sewell threw down his pack with vehemence. "Boys," he said, "I don't mind owning we been took, and took bad. And I don't doubt that brute'll drive us main hard. But I been drove hard before, by timber bosses and what-have-you, and I reckon most of you can say the same. What we got to look out for is that bad air." He nodded respectfully to the two who had raised the warning.
    "Hardly possible," said the younger of them, "when it's all about you. What we should do–"
    Yarrow broke in abruptly. "Say, let's git on out there. Mustn't give the brute more call to devil us." To Parson he excused the interruption by casting an eye toward the man whose late entry had motivated it and who now was appropriating to himself the last three blankets. "Have a care who hears you," said Yarrow. "I b'lieve the barn's got a rat."
    "It won't be the last" was Parson's comment. Yarrow laughed and clapped him on the shoulder as they went out. Hounditch, not quite able quite to overhear the conversation but surmising he had been its subject, scurried after them to keep in earshot: a specimen of the alternative brand of usefulness he had promised Moyle. Meanwhile the brute–from then on they never referred to him any other way–was shouting for Ottawa, the half-breed, to fit them out.
    Ottawa was the camp cook, supply sergeant, and general dogsbody. He earned next to nothing and said as much. Whether the owners had found him, he had found them, or he had simply existed there since before the mine and stayed on, Moyle had never asked. Meeting the men outside the stable, Ottawa beckoned them to follow him to the nearest shack, from which he dragged gigantic objects of wood and black iron, and piled them, clanking, into a wheelbarrow: sledges from Vulcan's forge, drills whose S-bends were each the length of two rattlers, yardlong picks, shovels with wide pans, forks with sixteen tines, wedges of assorted sizes. There were too few to go round but not all would be needed at once and so each miner was furnished a half-kit–pick and shovel or fork and sledge–with a half-understood instruction from Ottawa to share.
    "Knacker!" bellowed Moyle. "Fetch'n." The old man they had seen on arrival took up the barrow, whose load would have taxed most younger men, and bussed it toward the mine in Moyle's wake. At Sewell's attempt to relieve him, he shook his head anxiously. Not to be defeated, Sewell picked out a hammer and a drill and took them on his shoulders. Others followed his example, and together they lightened the burden by half. Knacker nodded his thanks. Moyle stopped by the entrance. "In with 'ee!" he ordered.
    They obeyed of course, till it came Nate's turn. His private trouble had been subsumed into their collective trial; although the gash in his head still burned, and worse when he moved suddenly, mostly he felt it without remarking it. But now, staring at the maw of the hill, he found his body resisting and his mind urging him back. Seeing his hesitancy Moyle made a noise that might have been a repetition of "In!" or an unarticulated growl of displeasure; whichever, that and the press of the men behind impelled him forward. Once he passed the threshold his unease subsided, and he continued back with the others.
    The tunnel spanned seven feet both ways and a little more at the bottom, so it could fit no more than two abreast. The path was nearly level with a slight ascent and extended some hundred yards. At twenty-yard intervals wood U-frames spotted with white fungus buttressed the walls and roof. At each interval an oil lamp hung from one of the supports and cast long shadows before and behind. There was a ditch at the right to run off any accumulated water. At the left, beneath a strip of tannish grey mud and rock, orange inside the precincts of the lamplight and tapering here and there into weirdly hardened drippings, stood a wall of pure black, two-thirds the height of the men, with innumerable tilelike faces, one and another of which twinkled like diamonds.
    No sooner had Nate entered the cave than the clammy air weighed on his lungs and rushed into his head, freezing the burning at the back but imposing a new ache at the temples. Its odor was compounded of mud, oil, and a rotten stench he supposed to issue from the gases that had been warned against, but this was faint and his nostrils got used to it quickly. Perhaps the danger was not so great. He found himself calculating the possibility, and knew by that his mind was working: he was not enfeebled, except by hunger and exertion; he was not insane.
    Shortly he gave himself cause to wonder if that were true. They had reached the end of the tunnel and bunched up there to wait for Moyle. By them sat a hand-hewn ore cart, the only one the proprietors owned. The slotted wheels on which it had sat originally had been replaced with ordinary ones till a track should be laid, as had never happened. Knacker, squeezing past the others, parked his barrow behind it and dumped out the contents. His strength (or strength of will) amazed those who watched.
    The face before them was undercut ten yards farther, as high as the seam. Planks had been laid to make a dry even floor for the coal as it fell. A second tunnel opened to the left, running (as Moyle would have said) along the strike crosswise to the dip. Its height was half that of the mainway; the only means of passage was crawling. As soon as Nate saw it, he looked away and tried to pretend it was not there; he could not have said why.
    Moyle appeared with a deputy at his heels and two changes in his attire: his kerchief was pulled up to cover his mouth, causing the men to suspect he had taken Yarrow's warning to heart or known its gist beforehand, and he was wearing a cloth cap with a pocket holding a miniature mine lamp, which strewed light in his path as he walked.
    By its light he peered round. "Right, school's in session." He spoke more quickly than before as if anxious to finish and return to the open air. "Mind 'ee's lessons, lest master be moved to chide." Again he touched the whip stock. "Any man 'ere b'long to work the mines afore?" Yarrow raised his hand halfway. Riggs began to do the same but quickly checked himself. "So," said Moyle, with a grin as if having trapped a rabbit, "show's how she's done." Yarrow reluctantly stepped out. He studied the face for a bit and then the pile of tools. "No powder?" he said.
    "No need," said Moyle. "She's that soft."
    "S'pose we meet a fault that ain't?"
    "If there's blasting to be done, I'll do'n. Not none of 'ee." They saw the point at once: of necessity they had been issued tools that might make weapons, though unwieldy ones, but never explosives that would enable them to wreck the mine. He had given them the idea and scotched it at the same time.
    Yarrow found a pick and a hammer to fit his grip, slid them and a wedge beneath the overhang, and crawled in after them. He settled to sitting, legs stretched out. The others bent to watch. First he felt the rock over his head and tested it with the pick. Once he judged it safe he began swinging at the coal face, working from the bottom up rapidly and rhythmically, gouging deeper and deeper, propelling black chunks out and about him. Then he threw the pick down and took up the hammer. In he drove the wedge and deeper in, fetching out more coal and still more, till he heard Moyle cry a halt. He clambered out. "Did 'ee all see?" said Moyle–the closest to praise they would ever hear from his lips.
    Hate him though they might, none could accuse him of not knowing his business. He expanded on the demonstration with a further survey of basic principles. When satisfied they understood well enough to make a start, he set them to their tasks: Yarrow and Sewell at the main face, Parson by the cart–"You're too pinnikin to swing a sledge," he said, thrusting a shovel at him (Parson found it as much as he could lift easily, and a little more, but was afraid to say so), and the remainder up the left breast. Knacker he assigned to cart the ore to the boats.
    Riggs crawled up the side tunnel ahead of Hounditch into a chamber six by six, whose supports were set deep into the rock and reinforced with cross-timbers. He saw these through a light veil of fog. The air here stank more strongly; it grabbed his breath, forcing a cough. Hounditch, hunching in after him, pulled out his handkerchief and covered his mouth. They waited, but no third appeared.
    Nate had balked. The dread that had attacked him at the entrance had been weak in comparison to what he felt now; no more than a brook, it had returned as a flood. Inside that square mouth lurked something once known and feared, now unknown but still feared, and he dared not face it. Little did he care that Moyle was ordering him and ordering again, angry at first, then puzzled, and ultimately, once he saw he had a spooked animal on his hands, ready to deal with it as with all creatures that resisted his mastery: by beating it into submission. Sewell protested without avail. Nate did not budge; could not even if he had chosen to. He had become one of the stone people he had woken among, white and cold and still.
    Moyle took one of his long strides a quarter way round him and pulled his coat down to the elbows. "I'll brook none of 'ee's qua'ms 'ere," he snarled. Nate felt a sharp smack across his back. The snap just before told him what had made it: the cutting rawhide of the whip. For the moment that was all he knew, that and the pain, momentary but everlasting. It repeated itself, repeated again, and would continue so forever. Pain–but not fear. That hole contained all of it the world had, and there was none left over. It had turned him to stone. Moyle, seeing his last recourse had failed and furious with the knowledge, dealt him a vicious clout from behind. It landed on the earlier wound. Parson cried out. Nate did not. Dizzied to sickness, he staggered, but he did not fall. Stone no more, he brought himself upright and stood waiting for the next blow. Both he and Moyle were breathing heavily.
    "So you'd be a mule, would 'ee?" said Moyle, and then to the deputy, who had stood by without showing any sign of emotion, "Fetch the belt." The deputy might have opened his mouth in surprise, but if he did so it was for only a second, and he hurried out. Parson felt a chill slide down his back. Nate was almost past feeling.
    Moyle wheeled out the ore cart. His seeming hurry to leave having boiled away in his new passion, he did not rush the next words but enunciated them lovingly. "Mr. Bascombe, as is a gentleman of consid'rable learnin', declares this to be of French mannyfacture–and 'tes, I daresay, for I've not seed 'er like afore. The froggies 'ave their devices, to be sure, but this"–he hooked his finger through an iron ring at the front–"I've not 'ad occasion to employ till this."
    On the last words the deputy returned bringing a companion (mysteriously, and to some eyes ominously, since he had not been asked for) and, slung over his shoulder, a wide slitted belt of black leather with a chain running through the slits and a padlock hanging from one of the links. Nate did not see the nod Moyle cast the deputies. Wordlessly they marched forward and after pulling his coat off the rest of the way seized him by the forearms and dragged him backwards, bootheels scraping, to force him against the cart's cold nose. He did not fight. They cinched the belt about him, ran the chain through the ring, and locked it into place. Then one of them did something that surprised everyone: he picked up the coat where they had thrown it and laid it gently over his shoulders, but without meeting his eyes.
    "Now mule you are," said Moyle. "Knacker, you are emancipated. Load'n!" This command was directed at the others. Whether the dialect exceeded their understanding or they were loath to obey, they did not move but stood staring at one another. To make his meaning clear, Moyle grabbed the shovel in Parson's hands and jammed it painfully against his chest. This time Parson did as commanded. Sewell picked up a shovel, Yarrow a fork, and together the three began scooping up the rubble about them and flinging it into the cart. Those in the breast sat quietly, hoping the brute would not remember them for the present, and he did not. Coal and more coal the others dumped in till it seemed as much as any man could move and they paused. Moyle ordered them to continue. "No, Toby!" Knacker protested. "It's twice't what I pull."
    At last he called to them to stop. He stepped up to Nate and regarded his condition with evident pleasure. Nate lifted his head. To his eyes, seeing all things anew, despite the glimmers of a past life that flashed before them occasionally like mirages in the desert, this beastlike man stood drenched in misery, that which life had imposed on him as well as what he imposed on others. Nate could not fear it; he only wondered at it. That robbed Moyle of a degree of power, and his sense of the loss outraged him. He loosed the blacksnake and slashed at Nate's chest left and right in an X pattern. "For'ard!" he roared.
    Nate took a step, or tried to, but his burden held him. He pulled harder and the cart grumbled and squealed into motion. He took another step. The earth under his feet felt hard, the muscles of his legs and back and shoulders about to snap. The edge of the belt bit his flesh through the layers of wool and cotton between. The gashes from the whipping stung and stabbed. He could not do this.
    Yet he knew he could, just barely. Calling up all the strength and will he possessed, he could bear it without falling or fainting. He suspected the man forcing it on him knew so too; that was the kind of thing he would know. Now and again he laid on the whip, but almost glancingly, as if for show, for he must know besides that Nate would hardly feel it with all his energies bent on dragging the obscenely immobile mass at his back.
    Riggs peered out cautiously. "He's brought a curse down on him," he muttered.
    "His own fault," said Hounditch, "for not doing as he's told." Riggs would willingly have seen him buried under the next load.
    After what seemed miles of tunnel Nate stepped out into the light. The clean chilly air, welcome after the dank and odorous recess, infused new vigor into him, which served him well, for as soon as he set his steps onto the well-rutted track to the landing the cart, suddenly immobile no more, pushed down on him with such weight he nearly collapsed to his knees. Unable to resist it totally, feet skidding in the dirt as he struggled to brake, he half-stumbled, half-ran down the slope, stopping only where it leveled off a little. "Mind she don't crush 'ee!" Moyle yelled, chortling, as he trudged after. He cracked his whip in the air. "For'ard!"
    Nate plodded on, more firmly in control, back and shoulders tense and throbbing under their load, till at last he made the solid wood of the dock. From here gangplanks led to the barge, bridging its vast hold. "Unload'n!" ordered Moyle. This Nate tried to do by tilting the cart backward, as well as he could while twisting to see behind him, but it would not move. Knacker, who had been watching from above, hopped down to him and with barely an effort swung the cart around (and Nate with it) and tipped it sideways. Nate felt its pull on his flank as a thick black hail with its own dusty aura pummeled the floor of the hold. "Like so, see?" said Knacker.
    Immediately Moyle's voice intruded–"Up, me brave mule!"–followed by the clack of his whip. Knacker righted the cart and gave Nate a friendly wink, which encouraged him more than he would have believed possible. He wheeled the cart around easily now, though it still was not light. As he started up the path Moyle stepped astride it, occupying almost his whole view. "Arter a day of 'ovin' you'll be beggin' to be let in the pit, beggin' with tears in 'ee's eyes–and I'll 'ave the tears in mine, from laughin' that 'ard. Up with 'ee!" He stepped back and Nate climbed on.
    Up, in, out, down he climbed the rest of the day and well into the dark, when at last Moyle ended it and allowed the deputies to unchain him. Sore, cut, and bruised, he slowly made his way to the haven of the lighted stable, too weary to notice the chow line as he passed. In front of a cast-iron kettle hung over a fire, and an earthen stove that looked as if Ottawa might have built it himself, the man who was part this and part that was doling out reasonable portions of squirrel stew and Indian bread. Some of the men began stuffing it in before he had finished serving.
    Happily, the food was not bad, since it also had to do for Moyle, the deputies, and the owners if they should happen to visit (though they did so infrequently). The meals were short on game unless Ottawa or a deputy had taken the initiative to go hunting that day, and on fish, unless someone had ventured up river beyond where the mine had fouled the water. But even Riggs judged the eatings fair enough, though he did qualify the judgment by observing that just then he would have scraped the leavings off one of the mule carcasses if it had come to that. Parson got two plates, one for Nate, and all but forced him to eat.
    After supper he wiped Nate's bare back with a wet kerchief. Sewell lowered himself beside them with a grunt and inspected the cuts. "Not serious," he pronounced, "though they'll sting some. The brute knows just how far his leather'll cut." His eye happened to fall on Parson's hand, which he took and examined. The palm was raw and blistered. "You want hardening, boy," he said. "You're no laborer. What you doin' out here?"
    Parson pulled it away. "Man has to earn a living, hasn't he?" He stood and went to wash the cloth as best he might in the dirty creek. Sewell watched him curiously. Then he noticed Nate bravely endeavoring to slip his shirt back on against the wishes of his stiff limbs. Sewell slid closer to aid him. Nate nodded thanks; again he found himself grateful for a little thing. His eyelids drooped as the man's practiced, comradely hands moved over him; angels and ministers of grace– The phrase arrested him. Someone had said it to him, and more than once, but he could not pursue the question now; he was too sleepy. His shirt restored, he lay back on the straw. The same hands–were they?–laid a blanket on him. He shut his eyes.
    "Shoulda been back by now," said Jeremy.
    Jason was standing a little ahead of him staring up the Sound. He could see little in the dark but it did not matter. "Not a bit of it," he said, but his voice was hollow. "Likely he's hanging about to see the job done to the letter."
    "That's not what you told him."
    "No." Jeremy waited, and sure enough, in came the drums and trumpets. "But you know Joshua. Chance to catch sight of a tavern sign or a fair pretty maid, he can't resist the temptation to misspend an evening or two."
    "Sure that's not you you're talking about?"
    Jason punched one hand with the other. "It's irresponsible of him, is what it is, to keep us waiting like this. When I see him, I'll–I'll–it's plain irresponsible." He left.
    Jeremy stared out at the unseen night, which told him nothing it had not told his brother. But his heart did. "Yeah, Jason," he said, "I'm worried too."
    A boy called Jeremy's name. The boy was in the dark; the dark was in a dream. Nate woke to discover himself in the dark indeed, but a known dark. "Nate?" a voice whispered–Parson's, he realized after a moment. "You were talking in your sleep."
    "Dream. I was calling someone's name."
    "Whose?"
    He could not remember. But for some reason he remembered Sewell's earlier question, and repeated it. "What are you doing here?"
    "What are you?" Parson retorted. He rolled over and returned to sleep, or pretended to. Nate lay awake meditating on the second question. What purpose was it that had brought him to the strange dead compound in the woods where his life as he knew it had begun? Where had he been before? Who were his people? Who was he?
    Where was Joshua? The question preoccupied Jeremy as at Jason's behest he led the men in rolling a dozen barrels up from the wharf as quietly as possible and stowing them in the tent. He had less than half a will for the job, not only because of Joshua but because it was keeping him from Candy, of whom he felt uneasily he should be seeing more rather than less. Lately she had about her a frozen, distant air that in his experience always betokened some private lament; often a girlish fancy, but then not so often any more as with the responsibilities she had taken on she had shed most of her girlhood. So Jeremy wondered and worried a little about what her new sorrow might be; he was pretty sure it was not a longing for New Bedford.
    The rumble of the barrels, quiet as he had kept it, had woken her. Irresistibly curious, she pulled a robe about her, wriggled her feet into their slippers, and stole out into the moonlit street far enough to glimpse the last thick-waisted cylinder tumbling through the flap. Barrels, sounds of building, Joshua off on a secret errand: she had seen enough of Jason's schemes to guess at the rest and her surmise landed close to the mark. When she returned upstairs and Biddie, woken by some instinct, asked if she had any idea yet what those Bolt brothers were up to, she could truthfully state she did. "And, oh, pray it works," she added.
    "I certainly will," Biddie said promptly. Half a minute later she had thought of something. "Candy? How can I do that if I don't know what it is?" But Candy was asleep, or silent at any rate, and Biddie remained unsatisfied.
    Passing the parlor on the way, she had found someone else up. Ula was sitting in the dark, in the rocker by the window. "Can't sleep?" Candy asked.
    "I sleep," she said softly, "and when I sleep I dream. About home, only Daniel isn't there–or about Daniel, and then our home isn't there. Oh, Candy, I don't know how much longer I can bear it!" She broke into tears, which Candy hastened to comfort away and which raised a fear that he might be too late already. Without meaning to, she said it aloud.
    "What? Who?" said Ula, sniffling.
    "Never mind. Come upstairs, I'll tuck you in."
    It was an unusual night even for Seattle. No sooner had they retired than another citizen took to the street in his nightclothes, tucking his habitual regard for propriety between his exasperation and curiosity over the work noises, unevenly stifled, that had roused him. No one barred his entry to the tent or his approach to Jason. Activity proceeded on all sides, mostly construction of some kind, but beyond that he could make no sense of it, which vexed him the more. "What on earth are you about?" he demanded.
    Jason spared him hardly a glance before returning his attention to the dowel holes he was drilling in the post he sat astride. "About keeping the brides here," he said curtly, "if Mr. Stempel has no objection."
    "Keeping them?" Aaron began to sit on a crosspiece, which two men immediately grabbed out from under him and bore away, and so he kept standing. "Why, were they going somewhere?"
    "Signs," Jason said mysteriously, "hints, auguries. Whispers on the wind, writing on the wall–"
    "Will-o'-the-wisps," said Aaron. If that was all....
    "Thought you'd be pleased to see them go," Jason said, temptation getting the better of him. "Time was–"
    Aaron let it pass. "On the contrary, I have a special interest in their staying. Ben and I are going in together on a tea shop."
    "Tea shop?" Jason wrinkled his nose involuntarily.
    "Oh, quite the fashionable thing." He quickly explained, "So Ben's wife tells him. We're counting on the brides to be our main customers."
    "They have that much to spend?"
    "Quite a few are receiving weekly allowances from their young men."
    Jason stopped and stared. "Allowances?"
    "In anticipation of marriage, so to speak."
    "Why, that sounds almost–does Candy know about this?"
    "I gather it was her idea."
    Jason's shock and his anxiety to cover it with a mask of worldly tolerance were equally evident in his face. Aaron tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. "I won't ask what you're planning–"
    "Well, good."
    "–because I'd probably consider it a waste of time–"
    "Probably."
    "–but I will observe you're working your men mighty late. Will they be fit for work tomorrow?"
    "No matter. They're doing barely a trickle now."
    "I keep telling you, you need to instill a little discipline. I was having the same trouble but I called my crew together and let them know I wouldn't stand for it."
    "Do any good?"
    Aaron hesitated. "Not a great deal. But it's the princi–"
    "Good night, Mr. Stempel." Just then he caught sight of an encroaching crisis–"Sam, you lubberhead! You have that turned clean around!"–and rushed away to resolve it. Always putting things to rights, thought Aaron; or his notion of rights anyhow. As he stepped outside he glanced over at the dormitory. Whatever the trouble with the brides (and lacking a brother to employ as a confidential agent, he still had no clue what it might be), Jason could manage them; always had, always would. Thus heartened, he returned home to bed.
    Nate slept a sleep like death every night, but that only made the nights seem shorter and the days like one endless day. Moyle's promise of liberation notwithstanding, he kept Knacker, for want of another candidate, hauling the barrow to the boats–both of them, for the packet, as well as push the barge to market (wherever that might be), was to carry its share of cargo. So Knacker's course sometimes followed Nate's directly and sometimes preceded it, furnishing him with opportunities to ask questions and learn much. Never, by the way, did he master the technique of emptying the cart from the front, and discovered he was not expected to; the first trial must have been a small torment of Moyle's, for always from then on Knacker, a deputy, or (but rarely) Moyle himself was at hand to do it.
    What he learned betweentimes was this: Knacker had arrived there with Moyle; the two of them had met while working the silver mines of Nevada City. Eventually the owners would have no more of either, Knacker because he was past his best and Moyle because, in Knacker's words, "got a temper, has Toby–one feller like to died." When Moyle rode out he invited Knacker to ride with him and promised that anywhere he found a job Knacker should have a place. "Looks after me, he does," Knacker said with feeling. Nate could not bring himself to disabuse him, and perhaps, he thought, there was another side to it after all. They had come earlier in the winter and gladly been taken on. The mine was failing, the men disappeared by ones and twos, and so before recruiting a new lot–Nate's lot–they brought in the deputies. "No one'll run now," said Knacker.
    Nate asked why he did not leave himself. The old man paled at the thought. "I–I been with Toby a spell," he said; that was all. Nate let it drop. He wondered aloud what would happen to the rest of them when their time was up. Knacker took the question as meant for him. "As to that," he said, "can't say. Reckon can't no one say for sure." Just then Moyle yelled for him and he scuttled off.
    Whether he actually knew more than he had said Nate doubted but he was left with the impression, which seemed likely, that his situation there was more dangerous than it seemed. Men like these were used to lying, cheating, forcing their way. Might they not keep him there, him and the others, or kill them? He could not predict from past experiences, for he had none, or as good as none. So even if he were free of his chain he could not act or lead others to act; he did not know enough. He could only work and wait. In time he would know more.
    Although he was having the worst of it in the other men's estimation, he could not envy them as he watched them applying the principles Moyle had expounded at first. After cutting out a hollow sufficiently wide and deep a miner would entomb himself in it and continue picking on his back with scarcely elbow room and then as he bit higher and higher into the vein would switch from standing to lying to sitting as the height of the section allowed; in the breast all the work had to be done supine or bent double. To those who had never mined before, it had sounded impossible, yet they were doing it. And besides, they kept up the secondary jobs: hewing out the top rock to maintain a standing height and setting in more posts and lintels as they went. The coal that collected on the floor (the breast having an uphill pitch, most of its ore fell out into the mainway) they broke up and forked or shoveled into cart and barrow, saving the biggest lumps for last and then heaping them on at the sides.
    Hard as the work was, it had also its satisfaction, and with the activity, they now found the mine quite warm enough. They were able to steal occasional rests between Moyle's inspections, and those he kept as brief as possible. But still there was the blackness that couched everywhere outside the lamplight, even penetrating (it seemed) to their faces and hands and clothing. They saw the sun only once a day, at their late breakfast; they entered and returned from dark into dark. Then there was the unending din: the rumble of cart and barrow, the pulse of pick and sledge, the throaty roar of rockfall.
    Worst of all, there was the air, especially the nitrous fog of the breast, which left Riggs and Hounditch–and Parson, when he had to shovel out a pile-up there–with a chill and a headache three-quarters round at the end of the day. Yet those symptoms, though unpleasant, were not as serious as the creeping effects of other compounds, of whatever nature, that worked invisibly and insidiously: a sluggishness of body, a pallor in the face, a pressure in the lungs and chest. Following Moyle's practice, the miners shielded their mouths with kerchiefs and strips torn from their shirts, but these could have availed little. There were the airholes Bascombe had cited, square wells reinforced with crossbeams, but so narrow little air could have passed through them. The sole advantage of it all was the power it held to ward off Moyle.
    This morning he was at Ottawa's cookstand sucking coffee from a tin cup when his ears picked up a falling off in the normal sounds of the day. He soon learned the cause: the miners had struck a sulfur ball, a rock impregnated with crystal sulfide. Yarrow had called the men from the breast to help but not all of them together (except Nate, chained to his anchor) could budge it. The thing would have to be blasted away. "'od rabbet it!" said Moyle. He called to Knacker to fetch the requisite materials, and on his return the two of them set to work. They said barely a word; obviously they had done this together many times.
    Knacker held flat a length of blasting paper into which Moyle carefully poured a line of black powder from a small keg. He rolled the paper into a foot-long cartridge and sealed the ends with a paste Knacker had prepared from lye soap and creek water. After drilling a hole between the rocks he speared the cartridge with a long needle which he used to push it up the hole. He filled the left-over space with coal dirt. Into the end of the cartridge he inserted a fuse. This he lit with a tinder, ordering the others to stand clear, and then backed off himself. Within a few seconds they heard a loud but echoless thud, followed by the rattle of falling rock. A cloud of dense smoke with its own noxious reek prevented them from seeing the result till the smoke had faded.
    "'od rabbet it!" he said again. The ball was holding to its place. He grabbed up a hammer and a wedge and the others followed his example. When the hammers ran out the last two took up shovels whose pans would serve as wedges too. Only Parson stood back, and Nate. After much jamming in and bearing down they succeeded in tipping out the stone, which thumped to the floor. Almost before they could wipe their foreheads Moyle ordered them to roll it outside, which they did as a body. Moyle smiled with a plain contentment he rarely felt.
    But in him a good mood always had its counterweight of malice, in this case aimed at Nate, who had stood by and done nothing–Moyle groused–while he and the others toiled. He chose to ignore the condition imposed by himself that had left Nate helpless; in fact he had called to be released so he could lend a hand but Moyle had not minded him.
    Not since his herculean labor had been laid on him had he once complained or fallen off in the performance of it. In the first days his muscles had threatened to give out but he had fought to master them and now, stronger than ever and growing stronger daily by the very burden that tortured them, they enabled him to push harder and faster, to tread more surely and, with a little energy left over, to apply them to other tasks that wanted doing: for instance mending the stable wall where a few half-hanging boards made crevices for the cold to slither through. Borrowing a hammer and nails from Ottawa, who volunteered his help, he stopped the gaps, and patched the roofs of two of the shacks for good measure.
    Not well able to forbid him, Moyle chose to see his initiative as simple cheek. "Thinks 'e's some 'andsome, don't 'e?" he muttered between bites of his pasty. Ottawa baked one of them for him every Friday at his special request. Seated on a keg outside while Knacker, his usual supper companion, squatted on a rock at a respectful distance, as was also usual, he gobbled down the last of it and wiped his lips. "'tedn' no proper pasty," he said. He had communicated the recipe himself but in Ottawa's hands it always turned out more like an Indian pancake than he was accustomed to.
    "'tedn' no proper mine nuther," he went on, almost under his breath. "Nat like they'ns at 'ome." He sighed. "But 'tes gone round now. I ask 'ee, 'ow's miners to live if there be no mines? Eh?" He ruminated on this for a space. "'tedn' no proper mine," he repeated. Then he stood.
    At this signal he was done, Knacker asked in a small voice, "You wouldn't leave without me? Would you, Toby?"
    "I promised, didn't I?" snapped Moyle. "And I never goes backs-a-word–come as may." Shaking his head at his own weakness, he turned in. Knacker, with whom he shared his shack, or a corner of its floor, followed timidly.
    The same night Jason completed his work. He asked the men if they understood what they were to do on the morrow. They nodded sleepily. "Then let's away," he said. "I want you here bright and early for the unveiling."
    Jeremy looked about at the products of their labor, which in taking shape had gradually revealed to him the length and breadth of his brother's scheme. To his mind they were the dimensions of the tent and no more; a little of beer and a lot of froth. His frown was not lost on Jason. "Something?" he asked.
    "All this–"
    "Didn't think we could manage it in such short order, did you?"
    "It's not that–"
    "All that's missing is Joshua's part. Well, can't be helped. But when he gets back–"
    "Still think he fell from the straight and narrow?"
    Jason considered soberly. "I don't know. Could be Fertig took persuading. Could be he had to send off for the stone...." Jeremy was still frowning. "There is something, isn't there? Something I've forgotten." Jeremy began to reply and then thought better of it. He shook his head. Jason said they had best get home and thence they hied, leaving only the night watch.
    And in the darkness there was light; light through water; light on water: the boy was bathing.
    –only now he was back in the dark in a cave in a panic, crying out a name–
    Jason.
    It was still on Nate's lips as he woke. He had been dreaming, a dream he had known before and then not known, but this time it had left a trace behind. Am I Jason? he wondered.
    The night was marked by one more event, and that the most important. Seattle's main street was vacant except for the sentry at the tent, who was asleep. The door of the dormitory opened. The brides filed out, crossed the yard, and marched in procession to the church, which the Reverend had left open at Candy's request. A strange sight they would have made to a child peering out his window: a double row of women in cloaks and long coats with nightdresses underneath. They passed silently into the church, Candy last of all, her face as somber as the night. Jeremy was sleeping at camp, she knew, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away.
    Next morning she led her legion out to confront Jason's small force, he armed with talk, she with righteous conviction: their usual weapons. "Ladies–" Jason began. "I–we–the brides–" said Candy at the same time. The confusion of nominatives arrested her and he forged ahead. "What a glorious coincidence! I was on my way to fetch you."
    Still unsure of her approach, Candy labored to continue. "The brides and I–we–have something to ask you–tell you." Thimble! she swore silently. This was unlike her. Why couldn't she out with it?
    "Let it bide," said Jason, "till the time be ripe. For I've a sight will dazzle your eyes and lift up your heavy hearts. Step this way." He started toward the tent. The other brides looked to her. She stood her ground. Jason looked back to find himself a leader without followers. "This way," he repeated less confidently.
    She took a deep breath. "Last night the brides held an indignation meeting–"
    "Indignation meeting, is it? And what would you have to be indignant about?"
    She had difficulty uttering it. "We–" This time she let the word stand. "–voted to leave." From his expression she thought he might not have understood. "Seattle," she added.
    Jason looked about for Jeremy and felt relieved not to see him. Then he reflected that she had probably confessed it all to him beforehand, in that way lovers had, but of course Jeremy would not have taken it seriously (Jason had a knack of disregarding his knowledge of people when it interrupted the fine flow of his thought). He only half-listened as she went on. "We demand–request that you arrange for our passage home, come the first fair weather. You will recall that in our contract–"
    "But there's the point," he broke in. "There's the nub and the hub of it. You don't have to leave now, no, ma'am. And let me show you why."
    "Jason...." Why did he have to be like this? She answered herself immediately: because he was Jason.
    "Come along," he said, "and see a wonder." This time she followed, trailing the other brides; best get it over with, she thought. Some townsfolk, having heard the speech, tagged after. Jeremy and the other loggers stepped out of the tent as if by silent command, one at each tent pole. Jason turned to address the crowd. He was glad of a larger audience than the brides alone.
    "It seems," he said, "the good Lord looked down on the world and saw things weren't as they should be. Why, no! New Bedford there, that emerald of the Eastern seaboard–" (Candy, who had spent most of her life in it and knew it as well as anybody, thought the epithet inappropriate) "why should those high-collared bluebloods have it all to themselves?" (being one of them herself, presumably, she was unmoved by the sentiment) "–so He passed His hand over, raised up a chunk of it, and had His angels bear it away to set down here in your own back yard." The men raised and sashed the tent flaps on all sides, exposing the interior. "Follow me for the grand tour."
    It looked like a bazaar. The space was replete with the products of his and his artisans' handiwork. Some the brides recognized, others they did not, but Jason bestowed a name on each and pronounced it good. "Here's the Common–'course it'll take a while for the grass to grow. And here's a corner of Arnold's Garden–couldn't rightly make it out from the picture" (here he unwittingly incriminated poor Jeremy, whom he had chivied into further thievery) "so it may not be just like, but say the word and we'll do it to the life. This right here's our own Fairhaven Bridge, spannin' the village pond" (a mudhole).
    "And here's the best of all." He stopped at the row of barrels. "Put in a whole stableload so's you can sniff it to your heart's content whenever you've the hankerin'." Sam pried off one of the lids. "Whale oil, just like back home." The oily stench pervaded that end of the tent. The brides turned away, hands to their noses. The logger hastily restopped the barrel. "Now you got all you been pining for," said Jason, "so–so...."
    He became aware that something had gone wrong. The brides did not look happy even after the odor had dissipated. Of course! He had forgotten the missing centerpiece: the church tower Joshua had failed to deliver. The laggard! And himself a jughead for forgetting! Why, that was the main thing! He quickly offered it up to their imaginations: he would plant it at the entrance to town, replacing the totem pole. He then spotted a row of exhibits he had neglected. "Over here!" he urged.
    But they had stopped following, had stopped listening. "Thank you, Jason," Candy said quietly. "Truly, thank you for trying. But you shouldn't have taken the trouble."
    He saw she was resolute, proof against any argument or compromise, or what she called the razzle-dazzle. He had no means to sway her. The magnitude of the change this would entail had not yet struck him; he simply felt his own defeat, and that made him angry. "Why?" he roared. Some of the women quavered; she stood firm. "In the name of bloody blue blazes, why? I give you what you wanted, didn't I? All that was in my power–all but your precious Johnnycake Hill, and if you require it of me I'll scrounge and scrabble in the dirt and build me up a pile with my two hands till you have your Johnnycake Hill. What else is missing? What, I'd like to know?"
    "New Bedford," she said simply. "I'm sorry, Jason. Our request stands."
    "What request?" asked Jeremy, drawn by Jason's shouting. Neither had seen him approach. Candy started, stared, blushed, and then, not knowing what else to do, walked away. The other brides followed. "Candy?" he called after her, perplexed. "Jason?"
    "S'pose you knew," Jason said accusingly. "About that vote of theirs. You mighta warned me."
    "V-v–what–"
    Jason's face softened. He realized he was being cruel. This would have hit Jeremy harder than him, hardest of anyone. He offered an apology. "Know the two of you'll want to spend the few days you have left saying your goodbyes. Shan't look for you before nightfall."
    As understanding crept up on Jeremy he began to tremble. "J-Jason, wait–"
    But Jason was already elsewhere, preparing to dismantle what he had built up. "Let's clear away this truck!" he ordered, and set himself to it with a vengeance. Jeremy, on his own–truly now, it seemed–began mustering courage enough to put the question to which he already had the answer.

Part Three

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