Beth had died.
    Spring was breaking, and by its end flowers now in bud would blossom, though in Seattle or the surrounding woods you would see blooms of some sort, if you were looking for them, at any time of the year; rhododendrons especially. For a few weeks yet, rugs of white snow still lay randomly in the middle hills, but every one would shrink, and one morning you would wake and discover it was gone. If you woke in time, as Molly Pruitt did always, you could watch the pale gold dawn marry itself to the unpretty, malelike grey around it and slowly beautify its mate, for that morning at least.
    In the natural processes of the world Molly often saw weddings and marriages. It was unavoidable. She lived among brides, as they were called (prospective brides, they were actually), and the chief object of their hopes, the chief subject of their conversations, the reason for their being there at all was to be married. So also, it almost seemed, with the men. The centrality of the conjugal union to everyone's thoughts had surprised her at first, but since few dimensions of the adult social world either in New Bedford or here seemed much more logical or explainable, she accepted this as she did the rest, confident that by and by the mysteries would open themselves to her understanding.
    She had a brother, Christopher. The two of them had sailed to Washington together, a pair of small adventurers otherwise without friend or protector against storms, hunger (they ate from the sailors' mess), and rough handling by heedless grown-ups. Then, and for a long time after their arrival, they had been as close as peas in the same pod, and inseparable. But in the previous year something queer had happened: her brother had nearly disappeared from her life. Neither of them had set out to estrange himself from the other; it had just happened. What was even queerer, considering how lately the society they had created between themselves had seemed perfectly sufficient, was that she did not miss him, nor he her, as far as she could judge. At school she had her friends and he had his.
    At the brides' dormitory they supped together, but in company with the brides, dozens of them. But there were always a few too much upset to eat because their boyfriends were coming around too little, or too much, or always at times when they could expect to see some other girl. In this mood, from which none was exempt, they behaved like perfect ninnies in Molly's estimation, and she so told her elder sister Candy, herself a bride but also duenna to the others. Candy did not contradict her; could not, since she knew very well that Molly was right. But she knew also that Molly in her turn would succumb to the same silliness, as Candy had herself; the true curse of Eve perhaps. She did not insist on this, for she knew Molly would only argue about it and deny she would ever descend to any such foolery, as Candy remembered having once vain-confidently supposed of herself.
    Yet Beth had died, and here was Molly on this Saturday morning, after breakfast but before chores, and before the liberty Candy allowed her daily to visit the woods nearby and add to the pencil studies of nature that made up the matter of her latest sketchbook, as of its precursors–here she was lying curled up in bed, rocked by waves of tears for the dead girl, tears she had not expected and could not make sense of, tears quite unlike her (as she believed), tears of deep mourning, as it felt to her, and not for this loss alone; yet there was no other.
    Her brother was not there to see it. Their adjoining beds had at last (and rather too late in Candy's view) been sundered, and Christopher had been either banished or upraised, depending on the view one took of it, from the nursery at the end of the dormitory bedroom, separated from it by a wall erected latterly, to a solitary berth in the attic. He had begun to show altogether too much curiosity about the brides in their boudoir; a knothole in the attic floor had permitted him to continue its pursuit till Candy discovered it and employed her boyfriend Jeremy Bolt to plug it up. How permanent the plug was and what ingenuity the boy may have applied to the scientific problem of its removal and replacement at will were matters known to him only.
    So it came about that Molly lay unaccompanied in the wan light and the cool breeze (more like a breath) of a day not yet brightened or warmed and, having found no consolation in it, faced her pillow and poured out her sorrow into its enclasping billows. For all the noises that filled the house at this early hour–the rattle of plates, the clatter of feet on stairs, the flapping of bedcovers around the corner–her sobs, which sounded midway between mouse squeaks and a song without words or tune, could be heard to the bottom of the stairs.
    There they aroused the concern of Biddie Cloom, always the sharpest-eared of the crowd, and brought her (after she had laid aside the pile of napkins she had been carrying to the laundry basket, which were those too badly spotted or smeared for consecutive reuse) to Molly's bedside, only a little sooner than her sister. "What ever is the matter?" Biddie asked. Molly's answer left her none the wiser. Nor did its elaboration after Biddie, unable to recall a Beth among the brides, had inquired the surname. "Beth March? I don't believe I know a Beth March."
    "She's in the book," Candy said at her back, startling her a little. She pointed to a volume on the stand next to the bed. Biddie stepped nearer to read the title. "Oh," she said, and then, a moment later, "She dies?" She had been reading the same book but not gotten so far; indeed could not since, as she now discovered, Molly had taken the copy she had been reading, the only one in the house.
    "I thought sure she'd recover," Molly was croaking between sobs, "but she didn't." The loss was personal and irrevocable, and the grief it brought of such power that it had caught her defenseless and claimed her for its own, momentarily at least. She felt sadder than when she had lost her mother, protest as she would to herself that this was not sensible. She had vowed never to pick up the book again; she could not bear to, though she had taken care, when anticipating the onrush of the flood, to close the book neatly, not bending a page, and to return it to the bedstand, as if a part of her foresaw a time beyond the crisis when it might again be desired.
    Biddie had a bright idea, as was her wont. She always knew "just the thing," by which name she always announced it. In Molly's case this morning, just the thing would be a trip to the Seamus O'Flynn, which was just docking. Biddie had heard the news from one of the brides, who had heard it from another, who had heard it on her trip to the pump from one of the citizens who made it a point of keeping watch for Captain Clancey's arrivals and alerting all their neighbors. His appearances were no longer met by mass congregations at the waterfront; in the few years since he had made Seattle his home port, he had seen his craft, once the center of everyone's interest, dwindle in significance to one of a flotilla that crowded the harbor increasingly, most of them at or near the sawmill pier.
    But the O'Flynn still held excitement for Molly. It was the ship that had brought her and Christopher there, and its captain was the first friend they had made. She had been drawn to it more often lately, as an arm of the past that reached into the uncertain present and comforted her with a familiar embrace. At the mention of the name, the clouds lifted from her face, and the flood began to ebb. "Go greet her," Biddie urged brightly. "The captain is always full of good cheer."
    Molly put the suggestion into practice almost at once. After wiping her cheeks and blinking her eyes dry, she all but jumped from bed and ran to her small wardrobe (a gift from Aaron Stempel, whose sawmill had made it) for her coat. Only then did she remember to look to her big sister for permission. There were chores to do (there nearly always were), and even if there had not been, she would have expected Candy to say no. But she replied with a nod, accompanied by the semblance of a smile, which was enough for Molly's purpose. She ran out and down to the landing, then remembered her sketchbook, returned to grab it up, and disappeared again for the last time; the quick drumbeat of her exit confirmed it.
    But now Biddie had a misgiving. From Candy's expression she began to suspect that perhaps her suggestion had not been just the thing, after all. "I've said something wrong again," she ventured.
    Candy made her best effort to sound uncritical but was not very successful. "I've tried to discourage her from spending so much time down there," she said. "And over at Lottie's."
    Biddie's eyes resembled a pair of silver dollars. "But what ever for? Lottie is a perfect lady, and Clancey is a perfect–no, that's not right. But you visit Lottie's. We all do."
    "But at Molly's age...." Candy hated to hear herself, at her own youthful age, taking the same tone as a maiden aunt of hers she had always disliked, but now she understood better whence it sprang. "...she has to learn that certain things aren't done–or oughtn't to be done–or...oh, I don't know."
    "And then go and do them."
    "Yes. No!" Candy gave up. "Biddie, honestly...." Looking past her to the window, she saw Jeremy approaching. He was whistling; she could hear it from all the way up there. That was a good sign. If he was happy and his brow uncreased, it meant he had come on no particular business but only to say good morning. She went down to greet him, allowing herself to ignore the immediate problem for the moment. The problem was: how to tell her dear friend Lottie Hatfield to have nothing more to do with Molly, but to do it without hurting her feelings. It would not be easy. Jeremy would have said it was impossible; that was why she did not intend to mention it to him.
    He had met Molly as she came out the gate. "Don't see much of you these days," he said.
    "No." Her despair had been cured, but on facing Jeremy she found herself reverting to it, or the pose of it. Her inability to tell which it was or why it was recurring, to prevent it, or to control her feelings in the least at that moment (though she had felt perfectly self-possessed an hour before) confused her so greatly it churned up further unhappiness on its own account, and in only a few seconds. She ran on.
    "What's wrong with her?" Jeremy asked as he came up to the porch.
    He had meant it, of course, in the simplest sense, and so Candy answered him. "Beth died." She saw him endeavoring, like Biddie, to recollect a bride of that name. "Little Women," she assisted. She saw him puzzle more as he imagined a community of midgets. "The book."
    "Oh!" he said, and then, "She dies?" He had not gotten so far, either.
    "You're reading Little Women?" Occasionally he still surprised her.
    "Found it at Ben's. It had 'Women' in the name, so I thought–" He quickly buried the thought. "But it's a good story! It's about these four sisters–"
    "I've read it, Jeremy!" She sounded more impatient with him than she was. Her attention was on Molly, hurrying, almost running–now she was running–toward the wharf and the Seamus O'Flynn.
    The captain was always glad to see her, and that was one reason she kept coming. He would have been too much abashed to say why, but he knew perfectly well himself. A want had made itself felt in his soul as he sat alone of a night in his cabin, peering into his whiskey glass. After Lottie sent him home, sleep might or might not be waiting for him there, but what was, some nights, was a realization, at first showing itself dimly and then with ever greater clarity, that his long life had left little in its wake.
    He was thankful for the job he had with Stempel and the Bolt brothers, delivering the little lumber his craft would hold. He knew they no longer needed him; the publicity attendant on the brides' arrival had brought them more business than he could handle, and they contracted with larger carriers from the cities for major orders. But they continued to use him to ship their smaller loads, and would as long as he was able to ship them. At his age, and with his disposition, he had had no right to expect so much. Besides, he had the run of the saloon, at a fluctuating but generous discount, and he had Lottie to listen to him (more or less). A good woman and good Irish whiskey: what man could ask for more?
    Yet he remained unsatisfied. In all the world there was nothing he could claim to have produced himself. The cargo entrusted to him came and went rapidly, and he had never settled anywhere long enough to raise anything–crops, livestock, children. But now there was Molly. He had brought her there; she had been his special cargo, and he had been charged with seeing her safe through. Well, so he would. (He had been responsible for her brother too, but he believed a boy could take care of himself.) And however she turned out, he would be able to take a measure of credit for it.
    She reminded him of a girl he had known as a boy before going to sea. The two of them had played together. When next he saw home, and her, an army of suitors surrounded her too closely for him to so much as wish her top of the morning. On his next visit, which was also his last, he heard from his brother she was married and childed and living in the next village; his brother, recently ordained, had performed the wedding and the christening. That girl's name had been Molly, too, and in this one he saw, whether in fact or only in his fancy, the reincarnation of her shining virtue.
    Clancey had a regard for virtue which his intimates, if he had had any, would not have suspected. He had never practiced it to any great extent himself; he had first shipped out when he was still young and had been worldly-wise before ever he set foot on a deck. But just for that reason, he was quick to spot it in others (in Jason Bolt, for example, under his veneer of high talk) and set great store by it. He saw in Molly–this Molly–the virtuous wife and mother to be that the other had been but that fate or justice (if the two were not one) had prevented him from seeing. Sentimental of him it was, but there, he had been too soft where that girl was concerned, and it was the same with this one. He therefore treated her with deep respect and an observance of all decorum.
    Notwithstanding this, her sister had suggested–more than suggested, more than once–that he was not fit company for a girl like her. The suggestion did not offend him; he quite agreed. The only thing to do was to sneak around behind Candy's back and meet her in secret. That was what proper folk did in such situations. And now they would be forced to it for another reason, which Molly did not know yet.
    She mounted the gangplank, as she had so many times, in long, forceful strides, almost leaps, holding up the hem of her dress with her free hand. Her mode of progress was not very ladylike but was the only way she could get where she was going with tolerable speed. At the top, however, she encountered the large form of the first mate in the dead middle of the gangway. She tried to squeeze round him; he moved to block her. She tried to squeeze round on the other side, with no greater success. She thought he must be playing a game with her, but he did not look like the game-playing sort. But also, though she had never talked to him, he had never acted unfriendly before.
    "Stand aside, please," she said clearly. "I'm here to see the captain." The mate scowled down at her and shook his head. Now she got angry. "Let me through!" She tried to dive under his right arm, but he caught her and then threw her off. He had not said a word the whole time. She might have persisted all morning (she was Candy's sister) to the point of embarrassment–the crew's, that is, not her own–had not Clancey happened onto the bridge just then. Molly waved her sketchbook at him around the mate's forearm. "I have something to show you!"
    Clancey nudged the mate aside. But instead of standing back and beckoning her on board as she had expected, he stepped onto the ramp himself, with a backward glance at the mate that was every bit as stern as he had meant it to be but also, Molly thought, a trifle nervous–and now she noticed that the other men were looking at them, too. He lay his arm gently on her shoulder and turned her around. "Another time, darlin'," he said as he began to guide her downwards.
    She was not to be moved so easily. "I've drawn your ship!" She threw open the sketchbook to show him.
    "So ye have, and very nice it is"–he had barely looked at it–"but jist at present I'm terrible busy, I am, haulin' bowlines, battenin' down hatches, and the like of that."
    "Then I'll wait till you're done." Her smile was so full of trust it like to broke his heart.
    He gave her a small push forward to start her down and walked a little behind, with one leg at her back to prevent her wearing about, all the while adjusting his cap, scratching his chin, pulling his nose, squinting into the sun, and showing other such signs of the awkwardness he was feeling as he told her what he must, what the others had insisted on. "Am I the captain here or ain't I?" he had blustered, but it had not been convincing; he knew, and they knew he knew, that there was a sailors' code which ruled their masters as well, and any man who failed to honor it would be betraying his calling. Not only would other ships learn of it; the sea itself would know, and his next voyage would be steeped in misfortune. So he had no choice.
    "Darlin'," he said (giving more signs of awkwardness), "the truth is, the men won't have you on board, and there's an end of it."
    Molly stopped and stared up at him. She thought she must have heard wrong. "All the men?" He nodded. She looked back to the deck, where they had resumed their duties. One of them overtopped the others by a yard; almost his entire upper half showed above the bulwark. "Even Storky?" she asked unbelievingly. Next to Clancey he had been her best friend there. She called and waved to him. He immediately ducked out of sight, or tried to, but she could still see him. "I thought they liked me," she said mournfully, and stepped off onto the landing with heavy finality.
    Clancey was quick to buck her up. "'course they do. 'tain't that. It's jist that they don't hold with women on a ship. 'tis a common prejudice of the profession. Speakin' for meself–"
    Molly's face was puffed up with the look common to girls of her age when thwarted unjustly, as they see it, born of a state midway between a tantrum and justifiable indignation. She felt ready to cry again. "But I've been on your ship hundreds of times!"
    Clancey smiled gently. "But, y'see, you was a girl-child then. That was different." Now she felt truly desolate, and a little fearful, as if a section of the landscape she knew had suddenly been erased. "Besides," he went on, "your sister don't approve of your keepin' company with the likes of me. Wasn't she after tellin' me so jist t'other day? Tuesday it was–no, 'twas Wednesday."
    "Then I can't see you any more?"
    "'course you can. Soon as I've got everything ship-shape." He scratched his neck again. "Long as your sister don't find out."
    Molly released a sigh of exasperation. She took a last look at the haunt now forbidden her, and got a shock–or, rather, a surprise; there was nothing frightening in it, or ought not to have been. But it wiped the sorrow of banishment from her mind for the moment. Staring back at her from the rail was a face she had never seen, either on the ship or anywhere else. It did not seem to belong in Seattle; it belonged far off, in some place she had never seen and probably never would see.
    The man might have been twenty, though he seemed at once older and younger. His sandy yellow hair, which fell to his shoulders, was being combed lovingly by the wind. His eyes were of a shining silvery grey, and Molly felt as if their light were flowing into her. His cheekbones were high and his nose high-bridged, almost like an Indian's. His lips, half-puckered in evident amusement, were almost as pretty as a woman's. Molly felt faint; she realized suddenly she was not breathing. The man laughed outright–at her? She felt herself color–no, she must not blush now! What would he think?
    Without so much as a goodbye to Captain Clancey, she ran off up the hill. Not till she was halfway did she remember she had her sketchbook with her. She should have drawn him! No, he would have seen her doing it. If she got another chance, she would. But would she? Oh, what did it matter? He wouldn't pay her any notice. Yet he had seemed to. Because she had looked pretty? Or because she had looked ridiculous? She put her foot down, literally, in an effort to stop the kite-tail of her thoughts. She made a promise to herself not to think about him any more. But she broke it before the next ten seconds were up.
    Clancey had observed the look that had passed between the two and understood a little of her reaction; enough anyhow so that when he climbed back on board and his passenger asked who she was, Clancey answered him coldly. "And why would you be carin' to know?"
    The grey eyes were still on her as she ran, and stopped, and looked back at him (he knew for a fact, though all he could actually see of her at that distance was a small sprig of white). "Her face," he said. "Somewhere I've seen a flower with that face." He turned away from the rail.
    Clancey made a note to keep his eye on that fella if he stayed in town longer than a day, and if he should set his sails toward Molly. She was just a child; only the men's edict seemed to prove otherwise, and before much longer.... Curse the spinning of the world and the speeding of the days! He retreated below for a drink.
    The grey-eyed man preceded him. On the companionway he met two fellow passengers whom he had been rather at pains to avoid. He would not have minded them so much if they had not always been yammering at him or each other. In contrast to his simple grey suit (his only suit, as it happened), they were overdressed even for this weather; his taste recoiled from it.
    The younger one was pretty, he had to admit, but an imperious smugness suffused and spoiled her features; she had clearly inherited it from the other, whom she addressed as "Mama" or "little Mama" or even "poor dear little Mama." The usage also excited distaste in him, though it was accurate enough: the woman was her mama, was little, and was doing poorly enough: she had had a very trying voyage. After he had continued down the companionway (he certainly did not seem to them very companionable, since he had dodged every attempt to strike up a conversation), Mama resumed the stream of complaints her daughter had been having to placate all morning, and every morning since they left New Bedford.
    "If I'd known–if I'd known, Madeline–that the rooms were as small as this, I'd have sought alternative transport. And the first boat was worse! At my age, and in my condition–"
    "Poor little Mama. I hope my sister only appreciates all you've gone through to visit her."
    Molly did not go home, as she knew she ought to, on reaching the main street. Instead she turned in the other direction, toward Lottie's. After the woods and the ship, it was her favorite place; not for its customers and even less for its spiritous odor, but for the eternal presence of its owner, who always smelled heavenly. "Imported," she had confided once to Molly, and promised to award her a cache of her own on her sixteenth birthday, which was not so far away.
    As she started into the saloon, she heard a voice she knew but had not expected there: Candy's. She stopped and held the door where she had it, open far enough to hear inside. She did not see but could imagine her sister standing at the counter and Lottie busy as always behind it. And this is what she heard:
    "The right thing to do about what?"
    "About Molly," Candy said. Molly blushed despite herself.
    "Becoming quite the young lady. Pretty soon I'll have to break out the damask napkins when she comes visiting." Molly smiled.
    "What a coincidence your saying so!"
    "Is it?" There was a pause. "What have I said?"
    "Well, you know. About her being at an impressionable age." But Lottie had not said that. Into Molly's mind there flew, with its great black wings outspread, a horrible presentiment of what was to follow. First Clancey, now Lottie. Molly wanted to run in and drag her sister out the door before she said more. But it would have done no good; the idea was childish.
    Already Candy was asking, "Do you think it's right–proper, I mean–the best thing for her–" The difficulty she was having in finding the right (proper, best) description verified Molly's premonition. Drat it, drat it, drat it! she thought (and she seldom came so close to swearing). "–in an establishment of this type?" Candy proceeded. "She needs to associate with people who can set her a good example. I don't mean–well, you understand–don't you?"
    The last question had been put rather timidly. The reply, when it came, was glazed in ice. "I understand. You don't want her consorting with unsavory characters, and soaking up their bawdy reminiscences. The next time I see her"–the hurt was seeping plainly into her tone, despite her efforts–"I'll let her know she's no longer welcome in this neck of the woods."
    "Oh, Lottie!"
    She would now try to cajole her, charm her, make it up with her–and Molly knew it would not work. In the midst of a heartfelt expression of hope that Lottie did not think for one second Candy held her in anything but the highest regard, the saloon mistress said, in the voice used to clear the place at closing time, "You've made yourself quite clear, Miss Pruitt. Better vamoose yourself before my reputation rubs off on you."
    "Oh, Lottie!" she tried again. But Molly knew the discussion was over. She hurried away before she was seen.
    She fled to a clearing in the woods that was her first (and now, it seemed, her only) refuge. She went there to draw, and when she was done drawing, to think, and when she was done thinking, to feel–to feel the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the air, the smells that were piled one on top of another: flowers, leaves, woods, grasses, earth; some easily recognized, others mysterious, from exquisite perfumes to an occasional fearsome stink.
    Some town men found the woods boring because "nothing ever happened there." But things were always happening; the seeming peace and quiet was what permitted you to see and hear them. The forest was more alive than any town, for all the noise and exertion human beings threw up, and Molly felt it as deeply as anyone could have. And yet....
    The forest was not everything; or if it was, it should not be. The town, the dormitory, one's duties: these were meant to be at the heart of her life, especially of that life approaching, the distance to which was growing shorter all the time. Sometimes she knew it (or thought she did), sometimes felt it, sometimes only guessed at it, but at all times it was present to her consciousness, as was her fear of it, sometimes known, sometimes felt, sometimes only guessed at. From this the forest and the ship and the saloon (strange as that seemed, since it was the hub of village society) had been her escapes. Temporary ones, to be sure, and from something she did not, down deep, seek to escape but longed to be able to welcome.
    She could not welcome it. She felt unready, and much of the time she was sure she would never be ready. But also the world that offered itself to her was not all it should have been. She loved the earth of the woods, but not the mud of the streets–not true streets like those she had known in New Bedford but one big expanse of mire, unchanged since before the buildings had arisen in its midst. It was always surging into her shoes and spattering her stockings and soiling her petticoats and dresses, which were so pretty when she left the house but always had their lower rims end up soppy or caked with brown. To Molly (who could watch with detached curiosity as a fox tore into a hare) it was a horror and a mark of the town's lack of civilization.
    In fact it was civilizing too fast for some of its first residents. Businesses were appearing almost weekly, the university was creaking into operation, and much more, which only Stempel and a few other progressive-minded men knew about, was soon to follow. But most of the new additions meant little to Molly. They answered men's concerns, not hers. Those few she could appreciate, like the tea room, only pointed up how far the community all about them had yet to climb. If I could only be back home, she would think, and then correct herself, for this was her home: In New Bedford, or in Concord with the March family.
    What was Seattle's pride? The mill; and if you stretched it to include the Bolts' mountain, the logging camp: noisy, dirty, sawdusty places, full of noisy, dirty, sawdusty men. Much the same could have been said of the places she liked, Clancey's and Lottie's, but the first preserved her past, which threatened to fade like a dawn sky, and the second offered a promise of her future in the person of Lottie herself.
    Not that Molly expected to be like her, but Lottie was more fully a woman than anyone else she had ever met, and Molly knew all there was to know about womanhood; the bits of information and advice she had placed in Molly's way as they seemed useful had proved it. She had even shown Molly how to wear a corset as comfortably as possible, which was none too comfortably. "In time you won't mind it so much," Lottie had promised, and on her promising, it was already true. But that was not all. Lottie was also exciting in a way the brides were not, with a colorfully romantic past of which she would only allow Molly glimpses till "some day when you're older"; but would she ever be older? Could she look forward to such a colorful future?
    Her brother, it should be noted, did not share her affection for Lottie or Clancey, though he liked both well enough, and Seattle was every bit as civilized as he wanted it, lately rather too much so. This is almost the last we shall hear of him, for, as has been said, in this chapter of his sister's life he scarcely figured.
    This morning the woods seemed vibrantly atremble, as if some cataclysm were about to befall, yet all was quiet except for the sounds she herself made in walking. The trees watched her progress respectfully. Some towered behind others, like tall, gawky boys peering over the heads of those they had outgrown. Sprays of a yellow-green fern protruded from them like unruly cowlicks, held in thick furred fingers of moss.
    Through a break in the trees she glimpsed the forested mountains above, fuzzy with mist, like a watercolor half sponged away. Over them hung a gigantic inverted pyramid of cloud, layer on layer, like layers of paint; oils this time. The billows to the left diminished gradually to trails of wisp, but below, through a valley between the hills, clouds flowed in a thick white cascade that bubbled out at the sides. It exhilarated but also frightened her, for it was more than she could comprehend.
    As she passed among the leaves light and dark, the trunks of reddish brown, and the rare show of new and brilliant green, she became aware of a new sound, for this place: the pinging and ringing of a dulcimer. She knew the tune, too–"Blind Mary"–but never before had it pierced to the heart like this. It seemed to speak of something going or gone, something sweet and fleeting and ever after to be missed. She followed it to a ring of maples with a round glade in its midst, one she had never entered, though she had passed it many times. Here was the source of the music; here the player must be sitting.
    Suddenly she knew who it was: the man she had seen on the ship. She did not know why he would have come so far, or how he could have preceded her there, but no matter; it must be so. She was not yet ready to enter the glade and meet him there, not ready to venture so deeply into the dark (for it was shady). She backed away, a step at a time.
    Her foot landed on something tiny, which collapsed under it. She looked down, and her hand went to her mouth. It had been a pheasant's egg, and now it lay broken. A sudden shrill cry–the mother's, perhaps–made her jump. She could not draw today. Anyhow, she had neglected to bring her pencil case. She always kept a stub of pencil and a charcoal wrapped in a handkerchief in a pocket of her dress, but at present her hand would not keep still long enough for her to use them. With a last look at the glade, she set her steps toward town.
    Candy being out and the usual chores being done, Biddie had undertaken to give the porch rugs a good paddling which they had done nothing to deserve (she said to herself, laughing). They were doubled over the railing and she was having away at them with a will when she was interrupted by someone calling her name. The importuning steepness of the cadence, the conscious refinement of the accent, and the purr of self-contentment that this did not quite disguise were unmistakable. And Biddie knew the voice was always accompanied by another, as sharp and even as a knife blade, but no less self-regarding for that.
    Sure enough, on the instant of her awareness, this one jabbed out at her. "Bridget! Bridget, d'you hear me?" She needn't worry about that, Biddie thought, as she turned slowly and reluctantly to face her visitors. She had been humming before, tunelessly but with gusto; now the light had gone out of her face, and her form appeared to have shrunk. But she steeled herself and stood her ground as the two approached up the walk. "What are you doing here?" were her first words to them.
    Madeline (or Maddie, as Biddie called her) gave a little pout. "Now, is that kind, darling? When your mama and little sister have traveled all this way to see you?" Biddie appeared unmoved.
    "I'm used to it, my dear. We should pity the girl if anything." She then conferred the favor of her attention on her elder child. "You always did want your sister's graces, Bridget. I'm not saying anything the world doesn't already know. Would it be asking too much of you to show us where we're to put our things?"
    The question nearly made Biddie gasp. "You assumed," she managed to say, once she had regained her breath, "that you'd be staying here?"
    "But where else, foolish child? It's where you girls board, isn't it?"
    Biddie sought a reason to refuse (apart from the truth) and could not find one. But she could say honestly, "It's not up to me. You'll have to wait till Candy gets back."
    "Candy Pruitt?" Her mother arched her eyebrows. "I should hope a Pruitt would find a place for a Cloom."
    "She always was a bad influence," Maddie said. "Remember, Mama?" She leaned close as if she were whispering and wished to remain unheard, but her words came out loud and distinct.
    "Ye-es." Mrs. Cloom did remember. "She's the one who brought you" (she was speaking to Biddie now) "out to this godforsaken country. Always the wild one, since she was a girl. But you would take up with her."
    "And she never had any suitors, either," Maddie interjected.
    "Her own fault." Mrs. Cloom sighed with unfelt regret. "Oh, she's presentable enough. But parading about in men's trousers! I was shocked her father permitted it. But then he never was–"
    "And how long do you intend to stop?"
    The interruption was so loud, it disarranged her mother's thoughts for a moment, but they returned to formation, out of habit, before she had to command them. "How long? That depends, dear. If we can bear the privations of this place–"
    "Poor little Mama!"
    "–I say, if–we may relocate for good. Then the three of us can be a family again."
    The horror with which Biddie received the prospect showed unmistakably in her face, yet neither of her relatives seemed to notice it. "Won't that be cozy?" said Maddie. "We can sit and recall old times. Mama, remember how the girls used to tease her?" She broke into a chant:
    "Biddie, Biddie,
    Isn't pretty,
    Soiled her stockings–
    What a pity!"
    Then she laughed and clapped her hands. Her mother smiled and nodded. Biddie did not laugh or smile and, when Maddie began to repeat the verse, suggested to her that once had been enough. Maddie stole a smirking look at their mother. Biddie paid no notice; she seemed to be working something through in her mind. Apparently angered by the existence of a rival claim on her daughter's attention, Mrs. Cloom inquired sharply whether she at least intended to offer them breakfast instead of standing there like a dumb sheep. "It's too late for breakfast," Biddie said, studying her as she might have an insect in an effort to determine its species. "You'll have to wait till lunch."
    Mrs. Cloom treated herself to another theatrical sigh. "Well, if we must we must. What time is it served? Madeline will have to speak to your cook and advise her of our preferences. If she's having fish, she must take care not to overcook it. But fowl is another matter altogether–"
    "Mama," Maddie broke in gently, "I'll see to it. You needn't fret yourself." She smiled at Biddie. "But, darling, would you have the kindness to direct us to where we might freshen ourselves? Long journeys so mar one's complexion–though of course you won't have had occasion to notice a difference yourself." Her smile took on a pitying air.
    Biddie was moved to answer in kind but restrained herself. "Are you mute, girl?" her mother prodded. "Your sister asked you a question!"
    Biddie looked from one to the other. "I suppose I have no choice but to put you up. I'll speak to Candy. You can sleep with the other girls." She laid down her paddle, which she had been clutching all the while, and started up the steps.
    Behind her she heard her mother entreat, "Isn't there–some sort of private room?" Biddie allowed herself a very little growl.
    Molly would have been back home to observe this exchange and to take up what remained of her morning chores if she had not decided, on reaching the last fork before town, to take the turning to Mrs. Owsley's. There she would sit with the old woman, one of the first settlers, and share tea with her as she often did, and hear again (it was the main reason she went) the story of Mrs. Owsley's arrival in Seattle. The visit would make her later than she should be in getting back but she knew Candy would be lenient about it; she always was these days. She treated Molly gingerly, as if she expected her to burst into tears at any moment. Yet Molly was not that kind of girl. Or was she? she asked herself, considering her behavior earlier that morning. Oddly, since then she had not thought about Beth once.
    The one room of the cabin had little space in it for furniture, and there was little to be seen. The central and most used piece–Mrs. Owsley's pride–was a curved rocking chair. Molly sat in a smaller chair, almost a nursery chair, opposite. (Till recently she had sat on a rug with legs akimbo, but she had come to feel the position insufficiently genteel.) With the sun almost overhead, everything in the room lay in shade: the lace laid across the table, the embroidered comforter laid across the bed, the browned portrait of Mrs. Owsley's late husband on the wall. But Molly had seen it all before, indeed given it serious study, and could have drawn it from memory.
    As they sipped their tea she asked Mrs. Owsley to tell her again about the night she and the others had first landed in Seattle. The old woman blinked. "The night we landed?" Her eyes searched the room. "No...." But in a few seconds the memory returned. "Of course." She settled back. "It's like nothing you've ever heard." Molly could not count the number of times she had heard it. But she never tired of it. She shut her eyes the better to see.
    This was how it had been: There had been a steady rain all afternoon and the dusk was gathering as the ship's boat brought them in to shore. They clumb out, the lot of them, men and women and children, and slogged through the mud onto the beach, the cold grey waves lapping at their heels. The boat left; the ship left. The men went off to seek shelter for the night. The women crawled into the berry bushes and stretched a muslin sheet over them to keep the rain off.
    While the men were away, what should come slinking out of the woods but a gang of half-nekkid savages? They circled the bushes, peeping in and sniffing at the women, like as if they was wild wolves. Why, there was no telling what they might do. But by and by they slunk away and left the women to themselves, setting huddled up together holding their knees and shivering. One of them commenced to cry, and then they all did. Mrs. Owsley held out almost to the last. But then she minded her of her sister, lying safe at home in her featherbed while she cowered there in the wet, and she knew the truth of it: the hand of judgment had fallen on her, on them all. They had ventured out beyond the edge of the world they knew, and there was no turning back.
    Molly repeated the last phrase over to herself as she looked out over the site of the landing, called Alki Point, from a hilltop to which she had climbed after leaving Mrs. Owsley's. She felt sure she had identified the very clump of bushes where the women had sat cringing and weeping. Imagining the view from inside, she began to draw it in her sketchbook. First the line of bushes appeared, running to the borders of the page, and then a face took shape in their midst, that of an Indian peeping in (and maybe sniffing). Almost all his features were delineated when Molly stopped in mid-stroke, recognizing whose face it was, and the knowledge made her blush. It was the face of the man on the ship.
    Not having seen Jeremy since leaving the house, Molly had no way of knowing that at almost the same moment a hope of his was seeing fulfillment. He had expressed it aloud to his brother Joshua, who was holding up the other end of the case of ginger beer (homemade by the brides to Mrs. Beeton's specifications) that the two of them were carrying from the shed at the back where the girls stored their homemades that were too big for the pantry, to the lawn at the front, which was to be given over to a wedding reception the following afternoon. "Hope this isn't all they'll be serving," Jeremy had said.
    "If they do, the crowd'll be all women and no men," his brother observed sagely. He reassured Jeremy that two kegs of the real thing were waiting in the wagon their elder brother was now unloading.
    Candy was waiting for them on the lawn. After her return from Lottie's she had issued a summary decree authorizing the stay of Biddie's relations, inquired Molly's whereabouts (more for form's sake than out of true concern) and learned they were unknown (as she had expected), and then prepared for Jeremy's return, with his brothers this time, by planning where things were to be put for the reception, as far as she could in advance of seeing them put there.
    That was not far, as the brothers discovered. "Put it down here," she ordered, pointing at her feet, but no sooner had they brought it and begun to lower it slowly (not that the bottles would break easily, but if shaken up they were apt to pop their corks) than she amended herself, moving left a few yards, "No, over here," and then, as they were about to comply, returning to her original position, "On second thought, I think I like it better over here." The brothers looked at each other, exchanged a brief nod, and plunked the case down where they were standing, according to the latest instruction but one. "Well, that's not where I told you to put it," she objected.
    Joshua combed his hair back with his fingers. "But this is where it's going," he said. She looked to Jeremy; he folded his arms in concurrence.
    She probably would have given up then anyhow but had no chance to argue further, her attention having been drawn to where it was needed more urgently. This was at a front corner of the property, where the eldest Bolt was hauling one of the beer kegs from the wagon. He had it lifted high above his shoulders, weaving a little under the weight, and had just taken the shortest path inside the yard by stepping over the low fence (low for him) when Candy met him there. With a show of nonchalance as if his burden posed no strain at all, he grunted, "Where would you–like me to set–this little article?"
    His brothers exchanged a look. "Glad Jason's never tempted to show off," said Jeremy.
    "Mr. Light-under-a-Bushel," Joshua agreed.
    None of them had noticed the sandy-haired stranger standing at the far end of the fence, who had been watching Jason's labors and those of his brothers with evident amusement. Near him stood a flat tan carrying case, which was too tall for the fence to support it, so that he had it leaned against the oak behind. A smaller bag sat alongside. He continued to watch the others, his lips curled into a smile that had something of mockery in it, as Candy, having some concern over Jason's ability to remain upright very much longer, looked for a spot where he could set down his load promptly.
    By the time she had settled on just the right spot, his brothers were on either side of him doing the job for her. "Put it here," said Jeremy. "No, over here," said Joshua. "No, on second thought–" said Jeremy. They raced round him like squirrels, causing him to step backwards and lose his balance. He brought the keg thudding down in front of him, and himself after it, but managed to pull one of his tormentors along, and kicked out to trip the other, so that the three of them landed in a heap, one on top of the other, and lay there flailing and shoving and hollering, while Candy shook her head, till the three of them and finally she, too, melted in helpless laughter.
    "Hey, big fella!" came a voice. They turned to see the sandy-haired man at the gate. His bags remained at the corner where he had left them. "Yes, you!" he said as Jason pushed himself up, using the barrel as a brace. "Your name Jason Bolt?"
    "That he can't deny," said Joshua, also rising. He extended a hand to Jeremy.
    "For that he can't deny," Jeremy sang.
    "For he's a jolly good–" the two of them began.
    Jason clutched them by their necks. "I'm called so," he told the stranger. "What of it?"
    The man beckoned him to the gate. Jason glanced at his brothers doubtfully and, with a shrug, ambled over to him. The other two watched curiously. They could not hear what the man said, but there was no mistaking Jason's reaction to it. Hellfire blazing in his eyes, he grabbed the man by his lapels, threw him off, then leapt the fence, grabbed him again by the collar, and led him away up the street. Joshua watched thoughtfully. "Musta wanted the keg put some place else," he concluded. Jeremy agreed.
    As Jason marched the stranger past Ben Perkins's general store, he bade good morning to the owner and Aaron Stempel, who were standing in conversation. Aaron took on a look of incredulousness bordering on suspicion, which the doings of Jason and his brothers generally produced in him till he had reminded herself that they were, after all, mostly foolheads. He turned to Ben for his opinion on this latest freak, an opinion he would have ignored anyway if it did not dovetail with his own (and he was one of the few to use the word who knew what a dovetail was), but Ben only said, "Don't ask me!"
    Jason took the stranger as far as the edge of town (which he defined for his purpose as the end of the street, excluding the sawmill) and, having discharged him and ordered him to stay out, trudged back as he had come, dusting his hands one against the other metaphorically and indulging a smile of satisfaction. He nodded at Ben and Aaron as he passed again. He was followed, at twenty yards' distance, by the man he had just removed. Aaron looked after the two of them with a hammerhead grin. "Come on," he said to Ben. "This ought to be good."
    Molly had been returning from the Point by way of a hill path that narrowed to a short cut between two buildings onto the main street when the man whose face she was carrying in her sketchbook had flown past, making her stop short with a gasp. He had not noticed her, his grey eyes being fixed on the man ahead of him, whom she had not seen till she stepped into the street. Both were heading for the dormitory. Wondering, and clutching her sketchbook to her, she made her way after them, but so timidly that the two men from the store preceded her. They stopped and she stopped behind them (keeping two steps back to avoid the scent of bay rum that Mr. Stempel always exuded) across from the dormitory in the shade of a maple and watched as the stranger returned to his place at the gate.
    Jason was just explaining the thing to his brothers, unheard by Candy, when a nod from Joshua directed his attention to the grey-suited figure behind him. "I don't believe it," he said. He started for the gate, but Joshua, having heard his explanation, volunteered to do the honors himself this time. He did it just as Jason had, except that the stranger shook free of his hold, proceeding on his own power, and Joshua was content to take him only as far as the general store, ordering him out the rest of the way.
    He enjoyed no greater success than Jason had, however, for no sooner had he returned than Jeremy observed, grinning, "Something's sticking to you." Joshua whirled around, and damned if the rascal wasn't back! If the brothers had ever seen a bullfight, they would have recognized the look on his face: the look of the bull after goading. For that matter it was familiar enough to those who knew the Bolts, but they did not recognize it, and so Jeremy confidently announced that now it was his turn.
    The stranger stopped him with a hand to his chest. "Hold on here," he said. "I allowed you all to run me out the first time because I didn't want to fight you. All right. Well, the second time I didn't give much of a hang one way or the other. But by all the powers, you'll have to pound me into the earth like a tent peg before I let you run me out a third time."
    "You know," Jeremy said innocently, "you're right." He smiled and extended his hand. The stranger studied him for a moment and then put out his own. He had only an instant to recognize his mistake, for as soon as he was off guard Jeremy dove at him headlong, grabbed him in a waisthold, and bowled him into the dirt. They grappled and punched at each other, the stranger uncaring of his clothes as they were tossed about in the yellow dust. The two fought like young bobcats.
    When it became clear neither was likely to gain the prize, Joshua came out to break them up. The stranger happened to be on top; Joshua seized him under the shoulders, and his elbow shot back like the bolt of a rifle into Joshua's stomach; the reaction was immediate and fierce. He flipped over and lunged at Joshua, who skidded back ten or twelve feet before going down, with the other on top of him. They had hardly landed when Jeremy jumped onto them both, apparently not reflecting that the weight would fall harder on his brother as the bottom man. Their joint enemy dealt out blows in both directions and took as many as he dealt but showed no sign of flagging, let alone of a willingness to capitulate.
    Having decided the struggle had gone on long enough, Jason walked out and shouted, "All right now." When that had no effect, he reached down with the intention of pulling them off one by one. Somebody clouted him on the jaw; as likely as not it was one of his brothers, since by then they were all hitting back in any direction a blow flew from, heedless of its source, and Joshua and Jeremy had landed a few on each other. The punch Jason had received was followed by another to the ribs; this one was the stranger's doing and no accident, for as he delivered it he was looking square into Jason's eyes. His lips curled with pleasure at his success.
    This was too much for Jason to take. "Why, you–" He pounced on him, or what had been him a second before; the ball was continually rolling, and Jeremy's face was now at the fore. "Hi, Jason," he said brightly. Jason pushed him aside, saw the prey he was hunting, and swung at him. But Joshua, and now Jeremy, shouldering back in, were after the same, continuously moving target and were getting in his and each other's ways; and the stranger was holding his own against them all. Jason could not but feel a grudging admiration for him.
    Under the maple Aaron was wearing an uncharacteristically balmy smile. Ben turned to him and asked if they shouldn't–he didn't know–do something. "Oh, no need for that," said Aaron, and he folded his arms and settled himself against the tree to watch. He had never seen a man beat and belabor all the Bolts at once. Had he been capable of daydreams, this at one time would have been the foremost of them, and even now it made him feel darned good, as he did not mind admitting. "I've no idea who that fella is," he said to Ben, "but he can have a job with me any time."
    The sentiment moved Molly to a smile, and with it the realization she was smiling already, which shocked her down to her shoes. The man was fighting, like the silly boys at school, and fighting her friends–well, her sister's friends. And she was enjoying it, like a bloodthirsty savage, and regarding him as something of a hero. "Horrid girl!" she chided herself, and realized too late she had spoken aloud. Happily, neither of the men had heard, or seen the change of color in her cheeks at the thought of the word "hero."
    If a fight is no respecter of persons, neither is it of picket fences, as Candy discovered when the human tumbleweed that was occupying everyone's attention rolled through hers and pulled up several stakes. She ran down to them and then hopped back as they continued in their erratic course. "Stop it!" she cried. "You're pulling up our fence!"
    Jason's head popped up briefly. "We'll fix it," he said, and then disappeared again.
    Now they rolled back into the gate and forced it free of its top hinge. "Oh-h!" Candy moaned, stamping her foot. "Now you've broken the gate!"
    This time it was Joshua's head that surfaced. "Fix that, too."
    She jumped aside again as the tumbleweed rolled toward her. She spied Aaron across the street and shouted to him, asking the same question Ben had. Aaron shrugged lazily; he was still enjoying the spectacle. Men! Candy screamed silently.
    And now the quartet fell over onto the case of ginger beer. The one who landed first felt its edge and bottle tops poke him in the side. Yowling, he slid off onto the grass and took along the others interwound on top of him, whom he left off attending to long enough to wriggle around and deal the box a retaliatory kick. It tumbled across the grass, strewing bottles like rose petals as it went.
    Inevitably, in the eccentric orbit they were pursuing, the fighters struck some of the hard, round-necked protuberances, bruising a shoulder, an elbow, a shin against the cursed nuisances, and flung them out of their way, thereby stirring up the contents, which (hardly needing provocation anyhow) began to burst out in arching fountains of froth. Molly was delighted; Aaron thought this was carrying things too far; Ben was estimating the cost of the ingredients. One of the sprays traced an arc that ended, quite unfortunately, at the waistline of Candy's dress, which she had washed only last week. The men on the lawn stopped fighting to look at her. "Don't think we can fix that," Jeremy said. The observation was sound but probably mistimed.
    "You idiots!" she screamed. "Idiotic–idiots! What could be worth this?" She gave a gesture that encompassed all the surrounding damage.
    The men took a breathing spell. "You don't know," Jason said darkly.
    "No, Jason, that's why I'm asking. Whatever it is, settle it before you ruin everything! Oh, my poor gate!" She ran to tend its wounds, showing no concern for those the partisans were cradling, or touching and quickly untouching. They brought themselves to their feet, with further soreness, and the younger Bolts gravitated to Jason, leaving the stranger by himself a few feet away.
    "Only one way to settle it," said Joshua, less to Candy than to the world at large. "See this liar out of town."
    The stranger, who was then in the midst of brushing his suit off, glanced sharply at him. That flash of his eyes, Joshua could have sworn he had seen before somewhere. "Don't take kindly to being called a liar," the stranger said.
    "And we don't take kindly to being lied to," Jeremy answered for all of them.
    "Dead right," Jason seconded.
    "What has he lied about?" asked Candy.
    Now another voice made itself heard, inquiring in an officious tone with which the brothers were well acquainted, "What's the trouble here?"
    Jason looked over at what had been the gate. Aaron was standing there with Ben and Molly. "Bolt brothers' business," Jason said curtly, "and none of yours."
    "Always the gentleman," Aaron observed, not without humor. "As it happens, any disturbance inside the city limits is my business."
    "Or you make it yours."
    "Which I'm doing. Who is this fellow you keep trying to evict, with"–he grinned appreciatively at the stranger–"such scant success?"
    "Confidence man," said Joshua. "Claims–" He stopped, not liking to say it.
    Jeremy finished for him. "Claims to be our brother Jericho."
    The others all turned to the stranger, as if they could test the claim by inspection. Molly looked at him shyly, with her chin down–and discovered to her embarrassment and great pleasure that he was looking back, with recognition. He smiled and winked; she quickly dropped her head, hoping no one else would notice that she was blushing flamboyantly. He had, certainly, for when she glanced up again he was still looking at her and still smiling, almost laughing. She was not sure whether she liked him; but it hardly mattered.
    Through her discomfiture she remained dimly aware of the talk continuing about her. "Your brother?" Aaron said. "Now why would anyone want to claim that?" He grinned again.
    "For a fourth of Bridal Veil Mountain, to make a start." Jason met the grin with a harder one. "You'll understand the temptation."
    "Gosh," said Ben, "you mean he's nothing but a sharpie? I thought he was an anarchist or something, the way you was all laying into him."
    "That's right," said Candy. "Why treat him so roughly?" At that the man assumed a suitably put-upon look, the transparent falsity of which nullified the sympathy she had begun to feel. "Even if he is a liar."
    "There are lies," said Jason, "and lies." He admitted there had been a Jericho Bolt once, before Joshua or Jeremy, and after him a Jurgen, a Judson, and a Jeroboam, but none had survived.
    "Yet here I am," the man said.
    Jason would not look at him. "Say it again and I'll run you out again."
    On finding his air of victimhood had profited him nothing, the man had dropped it, and now he appeared perfectly sincere. But Candy knew this might be pretense, too. "Is there any chance he's who he says he is?"
    Jeremy shook his head. "Impossible, Candy. They were all still-born or died in the cradle."
    Now she understood, as well as one could who had not lived it. Beneath the hostility the impostor had ignited in Jason, she saw the old sorrow reawakened, and its reflection in his brothers. Yet she could not keep herself from asking, "What if"–she knew it would be kinder to stay silent out of respect for their dead, but what if...?–"one of them didn't? What if your parents only told you he'd died?"
    "He would have known," Joshua said, almost before she had finished. He looked to Jason. "Wouldn't you?"
    Jason did not answer. In his eyes, for the first time, Candy saw a glimmer of acknowledgment that the story was, not true by any means, but not altogether as fantastic as it had sounded. What if–?
    "Why would they have done that?" Jeremy asked, in a cadence that declared they would not. 'It's crazy."
    The sandy-haired man addressed himself to Jason alone. "You were having a hard winter. Wasn't enough food for the three of you, leave alone a fourth. And our mother was dry."
    Jason was staring off into a distance the others could not see, and when he spoke they could hardly hear him. "I remember that winter."
    "A couple drove through. Canucks."
    Jason turned his head, and his eyes met the stranger's for the first time since he had shown him the way out of town. "I remember them, too."
    "They had food in the wagon, and the woman had milk. But no child; she was barren. Our father made a trade with them–me in exchange for provisions enough to see out the winter." He stopped there, but the narrative seemed to lack a conclusion. "That's how it was," he ended.
    The others had listened with astonishment, the degree of it varying with the listener. The two least affected were Joshua and Aaron, and by a brief exchange of glances each recognized in the other his own frame of mind. In situations like this (though neither could remember any quite like this) they usually found themselves allies, and sole allies. Jeremy felt in a daze. And Jason....
    Jason was listening to Candy with more attention than usual, but then she was making more sense than usual. She retailed the simple facts: the man had been thrown out three times and kept coming back, had fought the three of them together sooner than cry uncle. "Does that remind you of anyone?" she asked with all emphasis.
    Jason stood almost (but not quite) dumbstruck. The hood of ignorance was lifted from his eyes; the light of revelation shone forth. (Actually the sun had just come out.) He seized Jericho in a logger's hug that knocked the wind out of him. "Brother!" he cried.
    A second or two later Jeremy joined in the embrace, but Joshua stood back. "If you are who you say," he observed, "you must hate our father. And us."
    To his surprise Jericho laughed at this. "For saving my life? Never! I thank–" He stopped on the verge of invoking deity, whether from an absence of faith or an excess of it. "–whatever stars are to be thanked he was willing to give me up. Reason I came back was to thank him. And our ma. But from the way you speak of them" (or don't, he might have added) "I judge I'm too late." Jeremy asked what had happened to his foster parents. Jericho said they were gone, too. Bad times had hit, and his father had not survived them. His mother had returned to her birthplace in France and taken Jericho with her but died shortly after. "And I soon went through what little money she'd left. I was living a pretty high life as an artist."
    "Artist?" said Joshua, with more interest than he had shown before.
    "Oh, didn't I mention it?" He gave a smile. It was one they were to see many times in the weeks ahead, and every time (if one were in the mood to notice, as Joshua did now) it came a shade too easily. "I paint."
    A stranger, a handsome one, who had stared and winked at her and had lived in France, and a Bolt, and a player of music in the woods (of this she was still convinced), and on top of all else an artist–the impress of each of these causes for admiration, if not adoration, swirled together in Molly's head like brightly colored paints and made her slightly dizzy. If she had ever sneaked more than a sip of champagne she would have had an experience to compare it to, albeit imperfectly. It filled her eyes (spring was here indeed) and her hands (she wanted to draw) and feet (she wanted to dance). No one had ever made her feel like this.
    When she first arrived in Seattle she had formed an infatuation for Jeremy (who had never guessed it), and when it had subsided, another for Joshua (who had), and after that for Jason (who had taken it for granted, since from boyhood he had regarded such attention as his due). But none of them was anything like Jericho. She could not see yet how he was like them; a picking from the same ingredients newly mixed.
    He led them down to his carrying case, which was still leaning on the oak at the corner. Molly could guess what was inside, but not the character of it; no one was prepared for that. Jericho slid out the canvas, wrapped in cloth, and set it down on the empty case, in preference to the dirt. The others assembled in front of it as he removed the swaddling. "Holy smoke," said Ben.
    It was a picture in oils of a woman holding a flower, a jungle blossom (the gladiolus, which none of them knew), blazing fiercely orange and red at the tip of a cool green stalk. The woman's wrap sported stripes to match. She had skin of a rich brown, which darkened as it peaked into twin aureoles– "Oh, my," said Candy. Then she remembered Molly's presence and felt the urge to rush over and shield her eyes. Too late; they were absorbing every detail. Molly saw that the woman was like the flower, was the flower. Both were so beautiful she had forgotten she should be blushing till she noticed Jericho's eye on her again. He seemed amused but also intrigued by her reactions–or was her conceit running away with her?
    "You do paint," Joshua said in a respectful tone.
    "And I'm always searching for the right subject," he replied, his eye still on Molly. This was not lost on her sister, nor the change in her complexion. She was luckily relieved from others' scrutiny when Jason, who stuck to a view of art more prosaic than his brother's, asked loudly if Jericho really earned a living with "those."
    "You'll find me hanging in some of the best houses in Paris," Jericho bragged.
    "And in the Louvre?" Candy prided herself on this knowledge.
    "Oh, the Louvre," he said in an offhand manner, incidentally correcting her pronunciation. "That goes without saying." It had rolled off his tongue too easily, and Joshua exchanged another glance with Aaron.
    "How'd you like to come work for the family?"
    Joshua knew Jason was prone to brainstorms, often to his later regret, but this seemed more dubious than most. "Has he ever done any lumberjacking?"
    "Not as a lumberjack! As the camp artist."
    Jeremy thought for a second. "We've never had a camp artist."
    "We have now." He clapped Jericho on the shoulder. "You can redo all our signs."
    Jericho's smile had an air of tolerance about it. "I think he's a long way past sign painting," Joshua said, with a nod toward the canvas.
    Jericho surprised him again. "Not at all. It's how I make ends meet. Between commissions," he added quickly.
    "Then it's settled," said Jason. "I'll show you about the camp. We can leave the rest of the setting up till–" A glance at the lawn revealed the wake the brawl had cut: a litter of bottles, an upturned crate, soaked patches of grass, and a stretch of fence that sprawled drunkenly. "You stay and fix up the mess," he ordered Joshua. "You won't mind?"
    "Well–"
    "That's fine, then." He threw his arm around Jericho. "Come, brother."
    Jericho resisted. "My picture–"
    "Don't forget the picture," Jason called to Joshua over his shoulder. Jericho frowned a little at this but allowed himself to be bustled away. Jeremy hurried along on Jason's other side, happy at having escaped the cleaning detail. "You'll sleep in the tent with us," Jason was telling Jericho.
    Where? thought Jeremy.
    He said it aloud when they got to the tent. The climb uphill had taxed Jericho less than it would have most newcomers. Jeremy was forming an admiration for him and would have loved having him there for long talks before turning in, but it was plainly impossible. "There's hardly room for three."
    "Yes," said Jason. "Ah...." No further words came.
    "Appears you need a bigger tent," said Jericho.
    It had been an idle pleasantry, but Jason lit on it. "We'll get one! Biggest tent you ever saw. Meanwhile you can sleep in the bunkhouse with the men. You won't mind?" Jericho opened his mouth. "That's fine, then."
    Unlike Joshua, who had left it at that, Jericho felt moved to give his express consent, as if it had preceded rather than followed the close of discussion. "Believe me, I've slept worse places."
    Jason led him out to introduce him to some of the crew. "Boys," he said, "meet our brother." The stares and open mouths his announcement produced pleased him greatly.
    The one who had been the occasion of it looked content enough but had a different source of satisfaction in mind, as Jeremy learned when he bent his head close to whisper, "That saloon in town. Is it the closest?"
    "Closest and only."
    "How late's it stay open?"
    "Long as there's a dry gullet."
    Jericho broke into the first broad smile Jeremy had seen from him. And he did not waste the knowledge gained; after supper, he invited his brothers to Lottie's for a drink, which the two elder ones declined, to celebrate his induction into the family.
    On the way down he showed himself miffed by the refusal. "Shoulda thought the least my brothers could do would be to drink my health." Jeremy told him it was nothing personal: Jason always went to bed early, and Joshua had been up late the past several nights figuring out how to set up a machine they had just acquired; Jeremy did not know the details, for Joshua was keeping them secret. Jericho seemed little placated by the information but said no more.
    Or said no more then, but he returned to the theme later, long after Molly was nestled snug in her bed (and it would not have been incorrect to say that visions of him danced in her head), when his tongue was feeling rather freer. Jeremy's felt as if it had turned to seaweed, as well as having ideas of its own about which way to go. Lottie had warned him that while his brother might have two hollow legs he did not, and he had best modify his intake accordingly. Jericho had responded to this by ordering two more whiskies, for which Jeremy would be paying, as for those that had preceded. "Still don't see," Jericho said, "why Jason couldn't 'a' joined us." He wagged his head. "Don't see at all."
    "Don'cha worry 'bout it," Jeremy assured him, patting him clumsily. "Th'ow yuh big welcome t'morra at the weddin' r'ception. Big t'do–hurrah!" He waved his hand in the air and then remembered he was in the wedding party. "Gotta get home," he said with a sudden sense of duty. "Early t' bed, early t' rise, makes a–makes a–" He turned to Jericho. "Wha's it make?" Jericho shrugged. Jeremy gave up on the question and started for the doors with a wavering step. Jericho pulled him back by the arm and ordered one more for the road.
    "Better leave while you're both upright," Lottie counseled. Her eyes were on Jeremy, who had already broken free of his brother's grip and was staggering away. Jericho resigned himself with a roll of the eyes, drained the few drops that remained in both their glasses, and after nodding Lottie a good night trailed Jeremy out. She watched him with curiosity and disapproval. She had seen his kind before, but he had veils around him, like Salome; she preferred her men (and women, come to that) plainspoken. Yet she did not like to judge from a first acquaintance, however revealing; she would wait and see.
    Had Clancey been there, the two of them might have conferred on the subject, on which Clancey had already formed an opinion. But tonight he had chosen to stay on board, meditating on the two Mollies, and retired early.
    Out on the Sound, a pulling boat he would not have recognized was gliding through the moonlit water toward the main landing. Standing in the bows was a tall figure in a long black coat with wide lapels, a black broad-brimmed hat, and at his throat a white ruffed collar. The man rowing was dressed about like any other sailor. When he had moored, the man in the coat climbed out and mounted the ladder-like steps to the landing, from which he looked up the sloping street. At its crest he could see the north end of the brides' dormitory. This, he said to himself, and this only can it be. He headed up the street while his man waited.
    The bride-to-be was wakeful. Most of the others had fallen off to sleep. For their sakes Candy made sure to keep her voice soft as she sat with Kate on her bed buoying her spirits, as she did every bride's the night before the event. "Ready for the big occasion?" she asked, as she always did.
    "No."
    This was the answer always given, and Candy always gave the same reassurance: "Wedding day jitters. Everybody has them."
    Instead of smiling gratefully, as most brides did, Kate gasped. She had happened to glance out into the yard; now she clutched Candy's arm. "It's him! There, by the fence!"
    Candy stood to look out. "I don't see anyone."
    Kate's eyes swept the whole of the street within their view. It was certainly empty now. "Imagining things," she said, without saying whom she had imagined. "You're right, I am jittery. Do you suppose...a thimbleful of sherry...?"
    Candy smiled mischievously. "The perfect cure." She rose and beckoned to Kate to follow. "Don't tell the others–especially Biddie." Kate nodded.
    While she downed her restorative, the two roving Bolts were recovering in part from the effects of theirs. The climb in the cold wind had cleared their heads a little, though Jericho continued to manifest a sodden disappointment that Jason and Joshua had not come along. "Told yuh," Jeremy said, "Joshua's workin' on our new machine." He put his finger to his lips. "But iss secret. Shhh."
    "Didn't hafta to do it tonight, did he? Coulda did it tomorrow."
    But Jeremy was one up on him. "No, he can't. And yuh know why? Account of the weddin'. Everybody's goin'. Jason–Joshua–Jason–" He tried to think of others. "You and me–"
    "Jason says you all stop work every time one of you gets married. Take off the whole day. That so?"
    Jeremy nodded. Then he remembered that tomorrow was Sunday and so reminded Jericho, who had not known it, either. "But we'd take off, anyway," he allowed. "Pay our respec's to the brood and grime." That had not sounded right. "Grood and brime. Gride–"
    Jericho was shaking his head. "All them weddin's must make for a lotta days off."
    To Jeremy it did not seem so. "There's only a hundred brides. And they don't all of 'em marry loggers."
    "A hundred women! Whee-oo!" His whoop was echoed in the hills; perhaps it was the echo that made it sound hollow. "I bet you know all their secrets, too."
    Jeremy wrinkled his nose. Secrets? he thought.
    "Come on, tell me one. Just between brothers. And I'll...." His mind fished about. "I'll tell you a secret on one of the women that's set for me."
     He was walking a little ahead. Jeremy stared after him. "Why'd they sit on you?"
    "'cause I'm a painter," Jericho said with pride.
    "Oh-h," Jeremy said, and then, after considering further, "Why'd they sit on a painter?"
    "Aw, forget that!" He stopped to let Jeremy catch up and lay his arm around him as they proceeded side by side. "Tell me one of those gals' secrets, now. Somethin' they wouldn't want told around."
    Jeremy was now able to command his thoughts better than he had been, but even at his best he would have been hard put to satisfy the wish. He finally dredged up one thitherto unrevealed confidence, but this involved Molly more than anyone else. She had dropped one of the china cups hanging from the sideboard, and the handle had broken off; Biddie had glued it back and returned it to its place. They had never told anyone, not even Candy. Every day since (Jeremy did not tell this part, for he did not know it) Molly had dreaded the cup's first use, anticipating it would fall apart, but this had not yet come about. Jericho, who knew none of these people by name, even had he cared about the loss of a cup, did not hide his disappointment, but Jeremy did not notice it. "Now you tell me yours," he said.
    "Painted a girl once that had a tear in her petticoat." Jericho sounded almost as if he were yawning.
    "That's it?"
    "As good as yours!" But after a few seconds he reconsidered. "You know, I will tell you a secret. Something I've never told anyone. Then you have to tell me one of your own. We're brothers, ain't we?"
    "Darned right we are."
    "Darned right. But we never had the chance to be brothers–to share things. And I want to. Don't you?" He squeezed Jeremy's shoulder tightly.
    "Yeah! I mean, I guess so." He felt somewhat confused.
    "One time," Jericho began, "I took a job outside the law. Copied a Delacroix so's a dealer could pass it off as the genuine article."
    Jeremy did not recognize the name but understood the sense of the story. "Did he tell you that's what he was up to?"
    "No, but I knew. He went to jail for it. I didn't. I'll say this for him–he may have been a swindler but he never gave me up. He'd took a kind of a liking to me." He suddenly slapped Jeremy on the back. "Now you. I bet in your business you've took money for something or other you oughtn't. Maybe did it on your own without telling your brothers."
    If Jeremy had been stumped for a revelation earlier, he now found the sum of his life's dealings disappointingly free of duplicity. "All we do is cut trees. Nothing shady in that. 'cept the trees," he added as an afterthought. "Being shady–shade kind of shady, not–"
    Jericho had stopped listening a few qualifications back. "You mean to tell me you never overstepped some other fella's property line and swiped yourself a few of his trees while he wasn't looking?" The giant lengths in which the lumbermen trafficked had not yet been fixed in his awareness.
    "We got two hundred square miles of our own. Why'ud we go to the trouble?"
    "For the plumb hellaciousness of it!" Like the earlier whoop, this sentiment sat on him like a borrowed cap, as did the next. "Or maybe you fetched in a load of scarlet women to keep the men happy?"
    "We did. Only they weren't scarlet, and they didn't make 'em happy. Not that way–well, not too much. I mean–" Again he found himself in an impossible tangle.
    "But you musta sold your soul some time. Everybody does." Jeremy continued shaking his head, to Jericho's increasing impatience. He seemed set on finding some blemish that would put the lie to his brother's apparent virtue. "Somebody wanting you to hire 'em or buy from 'em, getting you to put in a good word with Jason..."
    "No...."
    "...talk him into it..."
    "...I told you..."
    "...and sneaking you five hundred bucks to do it."
    Jeremy looked sharply at him. "What'd you say?"
    "I said, somebody that wanted–"
    "Five hundred bucks! What made you say that?"
    "Then there was something!" Jeremy's face had betrayed him, as it always did, making it appear he had been caught red-handed at some misdeed. "I'm right, ain't I?"
    "Once," Jeremy conceded. "I'd forgotten about it, almost."
    "And Jason don't know?"
    "Nobody does."
    "Tell me!" Jeremy shook his head, tight-jawed. "I told you mine. Are we brothers or not?"
    "Sure we are, but–"
    "Bet you and Joshua have secrets you've never told nobody else." Jeremy thought it likely but could not remember any. "All that the two of you have had, I've missed and can't ever get back. Can't you share this one thing with me so we can be brothers for real? If only for tonight."
    His sad grey eyes, his heartfelt tremolo, his rueful air as of a boy cast lucklessly adrift: these gifts had gained him greater conquests than this, some of a nature that would have set Jeremy on his heels were he to have learned of them, but, as it was, confronted with those eyes, and the knowledge that they were those of a brother and boon companion on this dark night (and being himself in a partly liquid state), he had not the heart to refuse Jericho anything–almost–he might ask.
    But for all that, he was still cautious. "You mustn't tell Jason, or anyone. Not ever. Promise?"
    "Ain't I just said it's our secret?"
    "Well...." He hesitated a long time. His confidant waited. At last, and with a feeling he was venturing onto a side path from which he might be unable to find his way back, Jeremy said, so quietly that Jericho had to strain to hear him, "One man knows, besides us. The one whose five hundred bucks it was." He paused. But he knew it was too late to stop.
    "Who?" Jericho could not help asking.
    Jeremy quivered at bringing the name out into the open air, where God and all His trees could hear. "Aaron Stempel."

Part Two

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