On waking the next day (at five, an ingrained habit) Jeremy felt a deep sense of regret. But this proceeded more from the late-night carousal he had permitted himself to be drawn into, and the picking at his head it had left behind for a memento, than from the confidence he had disclosed almost accidentally. The telling of it had taken him and his listener almost to within earshot of the camp, where he had again enjoined secrecy and again had his worry allayed, for the time being; this morning he felt its bite again. But this took second place to his headache. He roused himself for breakfast nonetheless.
    Jericho, bedding in the bunkhouse, did not. He was woken by the trampings and mutterings of huge male flannel-suited forms that filled the room. Had he joined an army? No, he was sure he would never have done that. Then he remembered. One of the men, Corky, yelled above the others to ask if he didn't want breakfast. "Now?" said Joshua, horrified by the thought. Corky said it was that or go without. Jericho chose the latter and rolled over in his bunk. Corky snorted. Ain't cut out to be no lumberjack, he thought, if he's a late riser.
    The dormitory was the reciprocal of the camp, all women and no men, and the morning before a wedding was one of the few times its occupants held sway and the men had only to be led (not that they did not always, but on occasions like this both sides frankly admitted it). Under their direction the Bolts (mainly Jason and Joshua), with some of their men to help, finished setting up for the reception on the lawn.
    Earlier the dormitory's floral committee had visited the church, not a five minutes' trot away, carrying baskets of rhododendrons, simply but tastefully arranged, which they set on stands made from pine stumps, positioned at the sides of the altar. That was all the decoration there was. The Reverend liked a tidy house, and besides, with marriages so frequent till lately, they had not time or money in the committee fund to do more. "Rustic" was Jericho's comment when he saw it.
    The seamstress committee, which was much larger, and was assisted at some point by almost every one of the other brides, had labored longer on the wedding dress. In the first weeks of residence in Seattle, the women had seen the impossibility of sewing a hundred dresses at the same time (for so their hopes had promised, and the initial flurry of couplings brought about by the excitement of being in a new place, and one where nature danced around them always and everywhere) and decided to make three dresses, one of average size, one a little larger, and one a little smaller, to serve for all.
    That is, for most. A few of the brides received money from their families or their young men to have dresses made to special patterns or from fabrics specially imported, and the committee was always ready to oblige–and able to, for some of the girls had a great gift for sewing. (In later life two of them were to open a seamstresses' shop together.) One bride, not easily (or ever) pleased, had gone to a woman in Olympia to have her dress done and had liked the town so much more than Seattle she had insisted to her husband she must move there, which she did, to no one's regret.
    A few dresses had to be sewn to order for those brides who were much larger than the rest, or much smaller, like Kate. Molly, who was not tall herself, had watched the creation of Kate's with excitement, for she thought it likely to pass to her one day. Her own uniform as maid of honor, she had worn in the same capacity on previous occasions; so also the bridesmaids. At every wedding in Seattle these numbered more than the customary six, the size of the complement depending on how many particular friends the bride could claim. Today they numbered eighteen.
    One of Kate's particular friends was Molly, who was with her in the vestry helping her dress in front of the one narrow mirror. Molly loved Kate and was sorry to see her go, but after all she would not be going far: Andrew was one of Jason's men and would build their house nearby. Not a cabin, she hoped; Seattle had enough of those. But there was scant chance of that, since no one was building cabins any more.
    She gazed at Kate in her white lace, her chestnut hair cascading down behind. "Wish I had your hair," Molly said, not for the first time.
    "We all wish for what we don't have." Kate's eyes moved to the door and seemed to look beyond it. Whatever her fancy, she shook it off after a moment and returned to the business at hand, and to the puzzled girl beside her. Kate smiled to show everything was all right. "When I was your age I'd have given my eyeteeth for those sunflower tresses." She stroked them affectionately. "As we grow up we learn to appreciate what we have and be content with it, even if–" She checked herself.
    Molly's mind had strayed in a different direction. "Wish my name wasn't Molly. Wish it were Meg. Or Amy."
    "When you were reading the Odyssey, it was Penelope. Tell you what, you pick one and that's what I'll–Molly, what are you doing?"
    The answer was clear: Molly was pinching her cheeks and watching in the mirror to see how red she could make them. "I've seen you do this before you go out sparking with Andrew."
    "Molly! You shouldn't say things like that."
    "Well, don't you?"
    At this Kate dropped the look of prim reproof she had put on. "Yes," she admitted, laughing, "I do." She saw that Molly had drawn her small belly in, turned on her heel, and was studying its reflected profile. "What's this now?"
    "I could lace my corset tighter."
    "Molly–"
    "I could! I've seen some of the girls do it a whole two inches!"
    "And turn blue because they can't breathe." Molly looked about to do so herself. "Molly, breathe!" She let out a huge exhalation, and her midriff with it. It left her feeling defeated. Kate put an arm halfway round her. "Why the sudden need for ruby cheeks and a cinched waist? Is it for a boy at school?"
    "No!" Molly said in surprise. "The boys at school...." She realized Kate was waiting for her to finish. "They're boys." She did not know how better to describe it. "They're like children."
    Kate began to reply that they were children, and so was Molly herself. Then she remembered how she had felt at that age, not so long before, and for that matter still did. "I know," she said, as one woman to another. "And a lot of them never do catch up."
     One of those she had in mind was the bridegroom himself. He was waiting outside the church with Joshua, his best man, and best friend before Andrew had come to work at the camp. The distance that Joshua had to maintain as his supervisor had ended their hunting trips, which sometimes had lasted all night. Neither begrudged the loss; they accepted their estrangement as natural law. Jason and Jeremy had no friends among the men, either; no boss did.
    But for today the old intimacy was partly restored. Andrew had seen an omen. A black crow had landed on a stump by him and stared at him all through breakfast. He had tried to shoo it away, but it would not budge till he got up from the table. "Something'll go wrong," he said to Joshua. "I can feel it."
    "Wedding day jitters. Everybody has 'em." He had heard Candy tell this to nervous brides, and it always seemed to work.
    "You ain't forgot the ring?"
    Joshua produced it from a pocket. "See? You got no cause to worry."
    The church lay at the end of the half-formed avenue that led up from the wharf and crossed the main street. A man in a long coat was standing at the intersection, looking beyond to the crowd gathered for the wedding; half the town, it must have been.
    The wedding party was forming in disorderly fashion. It had loggers for ushers, each in his one good suit (if he had one), and brides (as they were hopefully called) for bridesmaids. Several of the latter were clustered about a grey-eyed, grey-suited man, a stranger to them at first but now, by joint consent and design, a stranger no longer. Since his circle was the liveliest in the crowd, Andrew and Joshua, who had nothing else to do, could scarcely help watching them, though Joshua did so reluctantly. "Your new brother's sure made a hit with the ladies," Andrew remarked.
    "Yes, hasn't he?"
    His old friend did not miss the sarcasm in his tone. "You're jealous. You was their favorite before he come along."
    "It's not that." Andrew peered at him skeptically, in a way he had that always made Joshua smile. "Or not only that. Something about his eyes...I don't know. Man should be able to laugh, don't you think?"
    "Why, he laughs all the time." Andrew pointed. "See, he's laughing now."
    Joshua looked; it was as Andrew had said. "Only he's not."
    The laugh, or not-laugh, punctuated a description by Jericho of the latest Paris fashions, for which the brides had begged. "They're wearing their gowns cut all the way up to here," he said, grazing the nearest shoulder, "and all the way down to here"; and he brought his finger dangerously near the adjacent bosom.
    Ben and Aaron were watching him, too. "He's a bigger charmer than his brothers," Ben said enviously.
    "Then there oughta be a law against him," Aaron declared.
    One who was not watching was Biddie, although on his having been pointed out to her she had permitted herself a few seconds' observation, which had led her to the opinion that he was a very handsome fellow. But she had had no further leisure to think about it or about anything else, except as her houseguests bade her.
    "You never were an attractive girl, Bridget," her mother was saying, "and never will be, best resign yourself to that. Your sister inherited all the looks in the family from me–not meaning to say anything against your late father–but you, dear, plain as a post you were from the day you were born, and it was obvious to all of us we'd have a job finding you a husband. There was that hunchback, and he was comfortably off, too, but then he would die–well, it's water under the bridge now. But what I say to you, Bridget, what I say is that despite the disadvantages nature burdened you with, you might have tried to be a pleasant girl, sit still off to the side and mind your betters–and listen, for heaven's sake, a man likes a girl to listen to him once in a while. But no, you'd chatter on and on, without a tittle of sense in it or a care for anyone but yourself, wouldn't brook interruption–"
    "Mama–"
    "Hush, I'm speaking to you! You might have made something of yourself, truly you might, and the whole world laid it to me that you didn't. But honestly, I said, look at her, I said, what can one do with such a plain, stupid, contrary girl? And, knowing you, of course they agreed with me. But she's my own, I said, it's my obligation to do what I can for her, I said, and I tried, Bridget, heaven knows I did. And how did you repay me? How? Up and emigrated to the Indian territories with that Pruitt girl, without a thought for me who raised you and did for you all those years and looked for you to do as much for me after your sister married. Who's to take care of me then, I ask you? Who?"
    She seemed ready to weep, but Biddie knew her better than that. "Yes," she said, happy to change the subject, "I thought she would be married by now. When I left–"
    "Oh, let's don't talk about Barclay." Maddie gave a little shudder, as if at the very mention of him.
    "Barclay? I thought his name was Roland."
    "Roland," she said, "was before."
    "You've been engaged twice?"
    "Three times–or is it four?"
    "What happened to them?" Biddie asked, not quite innocently.
    "The fools," their mother interposed, "didn't appreciate what they had. Forever harping and carping at her–and she was only saying what everybody already knew. Though, to be frank, dear, you ought to have known better than to speak of Roland's sister to him in those terms. Because what I always say is, blood's thicker than–"
    They were left to fill in the last word themselves, for at that moment Corky, appareled in his good coat and his only pair of town shoes, and with his hair slicked down for the occasion, stepped up to greet Biddie. She attempted to wave him away but he paid no notice, figuring she was only fanning herself. "Biddie?"
    "Not now," she whispered. She glanced nervously at the others. They were regarding the intruder rather in the manner of visitors to a zoological park. Darn it, Biddie thought, and bit at her lip.
    Corky did not see it because he was looking at his shoes as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I was wonderin', can I have the first dance at the reception?" He asked for it every time, and every time it was as if he had never asked before. "You always let me have the first one." Her mother and her sister looked at each other in amazement.
    "I suppose so," she said rapidly. "Yes. Goodbye."
    "You gonna introduce me to your friends?"
    "No. Go away!"
    Maddie was already moving around Biddie for a closer look. "And who is this darling little man?"
    Corky scowled up at her. "Name's Corky."
    "Corky!" She gave forth with a highly theatrical laugh. "Isn't that just the perfect name for you? Like a puppy's!" She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Mama," she announced, "it's Biddie's little friend, Corky." She elongated the name in a way he hated. "And have you known our Biddie long?"
    "Your Biddie?"
    Maddie introduced herself and her mother. Corky began to tip his hat and then remembered he had left it behind at Jericho's suggestion. "I'm sure she's spoken of us many times." Corky tried to remember one. He scratched his tiny bald patch. "In any case," Maddie trilled on, "it's kind of you to treat her as though you were glad of her company."
    "Huh?" He thought he must have heard wrong, but he was sure he had not.
    "We love her, of course, ugly little duckling that she is. But the attentions of a man, whatever his qualities–or lack of them–always leave her so absurdly grateful. Like a little mongrel dog, grateful for whatever scraps she's tossed. I recall when she was a child–she still is, really–"
    Biddie told Corky he could go. "You bet!" he said, and he gratefully made his escape.
    "You needn't have insulted him," she said quietly. "I don't mind how you speak of me–"
    "What ingratitude, girl!" her mother broke in. "Madeline shows one of your local bumpkins a smattering of courtesy and–"
    "Why, Mister–Bolt, isn't it?" Maddie said in an affectation of breathlessness, blinking girlishly. Jericho had stepped into the center of the circle they would have made if they had been less few.
    He ignored her and her mother. "Miss Biddie, I believe?"
    "Mr. Bolt." She blushed a little; this was the first time he had spoken to her.
    "Jericho," he insisted. "If your friend has the first dance claimed this afternoon, may I have the honor of the second?" Biddie was flabbergasted at his knowing about the first, but he had been eavesdropping during his own, more tedious conversation, which had been proceeding not far away, and what he had heard had finally stirred him to leave the girls who were both charming and boring and rush to Biddie's rescue. Those girls were miffed at the slight, and so now was Maddie.
    Biddie thanked him for the offer. "I know you're only being kind."
    "Looks as though someone here oughta be." He glared at her companions. "Come away from these two. The show'll be starting soon."
    Biddie shook her head firmly. "Thank you again. But no."
    He stepped close to her and spoke in a low voice. "Why? You don't have to stay here and take their guff."
    "Yes," she said simply. "I'm afraid I do."
    He studied her for a moment and then shrugged. "As you like." He left shaking his head.
    Almost at once Candy fell into step with him. The sight of him leaving the other girls to pay court to Biddie had so stirred her protective instinct, and then her curiosity, that she had left off molding the wedding procession long enough to listen to the exchange. "That was gallant of you," she said.
    "It was gall, not gallantry. Those two–" He stopped, remembering he was speaking to a lady; not one of the type he was used to, but the real thing. "Why don't she consign 'em to hellfire and have done with them?"
    "What's the longest you've ever taken to paint a picture?"
    The seeming irrelevance of the question escaped his notice because it was about himself. "Can't say, 'cause I ain't finished it yet. Will one of these days, though."
    "Why go to so much trouble? Why not consign it to hellfire and have done with it?"
    "Too stubborn to let it lick me." He had answered seriously before recognizing the question and its tone as his own. "Oh...!" He stopped and looked back at Biddie, who now appeared to him a courageous figure. "Poor little mite."
    "Is she?"
    "She's bound to lose."
    "Is she?"
    Jericho stared at her. Seattle seemed to be full of women he had difficulty making out. "It sure don't look like winning."
    "You're famous for your keen appreciation of women." She was guessing at his estimate of himself, based on the little she had heard him say; her perceptivity amazed him. "Which of those three would you soonest take up with, given your choice?"
    "You joking? Your friend is the only one of 'em I would take up with."
    "You see?" She vouchsafed a homily. "Things gotten in certain ways aren't worth the having." Then she hazarded another guess. "But perhaps you've found that out for yourself." She smiled at him.
    "Whoa!" he said, with a gesture to suit. "That feline look again."
    "Feline?"
    "Whenever a woman wants a man to think she knows more than she's saying, she fixes him with that cat's-eye stare." He imitated it accurately but with some artistic license.
    "And when a man wants to shun a topic, he makes a declaration that sounds like he's settled things, but he hasn't. He's only ended the discussion–temporarily."
    After a second Jericho broke into a laugh, of the kind Joshua found suspect; it was certainly nothing his expression just before had seemed to presage. Candy left him to it as she returned to the procession, pausing along the way to dispatch the groom and his best man to the altar.
    Most of the guests had gone in, too. Now the few remaining joined them. These included Biddie, Maddie, and their mother. They sat on the left with the brides (the town brides, that is, not the real one), who filled up the whole side as they did at every wedding, leaving the other spectators to find seats where they could on the right.
    Outdoors the line was taking proper shape at last. "Double file!" Candy shouted, clapping her hands smartly. "Ushers in front, shortest first."
    All eyes turned to Corky. He shuffled into place at the head, next to Candy's kid brother. "Just once," he muttered, "I'd like to bring up the rear. Just once!"
    Once the ushers were assembled, and Candy had herded in a few stray bridesmaids, she realized for the first time that the matron of honor was missing. She searched the crowd outside and in. "Where's Lottie?" she whispered to Biddie.
    The press of coping with her family had forced the news to the back of her mind. "Oh, dear, I forgot to tell you. She sent word she wouldn't be coming."
    "Not coming? But she's matron of honor!" Candy recalled their conversation of the day before, and a pang of remorse clutched at her. Biddie was watching her with concern, but Candy knew she could not help; nobody could. And there was a wedding to see to. She hurried back outside to find Molly assuming her place and Jason his in back of her, with the bride on his arm. It was a measure of the fascination Jericho exerted on most people at first encounter that for once no one was paying his eldest brother any notice.
    The notes of Wagner flowed out from the church like thick blackberry jam. At Candy's sign the procession started forward. First the ushers went, then the bridesmaids. Kate's turn was approaching fast. Those doors, through which she had passed each Sunday without remarking them, now frightened her terribly. They led in to a new life–in, not out. Her thoughts echoed, without her knowledge, the words of Mrs. Owsley: once I enter, there's no turning back. She took a deep breath, as if it were her last. Wedding day jitters....
    A motion glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, or perhaps only an intuition, drew her gaze to the old oak between the church and the rectory. In its shade stood a figure–or was she imagining again?
    The man stepped into the light. He was still wearing his long coat but was holding his hat in his hands. His face was brown and red and strikingly handsome.
    Kate fought for breath. The procession had gotten ahead of her. She heard, as from the other side of a door–the door to the church–Jason's voice informing her they were all waiting. The man was walking toward her, walking in time with the wedding march, till it stopped abruptly. Kate slipped out of Jason's arm and went to him, moving as in a dream. They stopped a yard apart, close enough for her to be sure he was not a vision. "Alvaro," she said, her voice choked, "Alvaro."
    "I had your promise." His voice was low and surging and richly accented. "Your promise," he repeated severely.
    "You promised you would come for me." She could scarcely bear to recall the sorrow of her long wait and her final surrender to what had seemed the inescapable truth that he had forgotten her. "You never came."
    He explained straightforwardly and without apology. His father had been infirm for many years; now he had died, and his estate had come to Alvaro. "I desire"–he searched for the words–"I desire that it shall be at your pleasure. But it is for you to choose." He deliberated like a judge about to pass sentence. "Three weeks I will anchor here, and three weeks only. Twenty-one days–you understand me? This is the first. On the twenty-first my man will wait until nightfall. If you do not come"–he stopped and then continued as if against his will–"we will not meet another time." He gave a brusque nod, turned on his heel, and marched off. Kate stared after him, feeling helpless.
    Now Andrew was at her side, and Candy and some others. The church doors were bridged by a double row of heads peering out to see what had happened. "Let's get on with the weddin'," said Andrew.
    Kate regarded him with sympathy. "I can't marry you," she said, and then added, in an effort to be completely fair, "Not today."
    "If not today, then what day?"
    This was more than she could allow him just now. "I don't know. I'm sorry." She looked around at the others and repeated the apology. Wanting to cry, but not wanting Andrew to see her lest he think he was to blame, she ran off toward the dormitory.
    Jason asked Candy who the Spaniard had been. "She met him on the voyage. When we docked in Concepción."
    "Ah, yes. Didn't recall his looks."
    "I did." And she recalled more than that, which she now forced Jason to recall with her: that Kate had begged him to let her stay, but that he had refused to release her from her contract till her year was up, which to her must have seemed a lifetime.
    "Only looking out for her interests," Jason insisted.
    "Lucky their coinciding so well with yours," Candy said coldly, and before he could answer, she had left to follow Kate.
    The rebuke stung, but he had no time to do more than acknowledge its justness before someone at his side was saying, in a tone so piteous he could not ignore it, "Knowed it was too good to last. Knowed it all along. Knowed I could never land a fine woman like her," and more of the same.
    "Don't flog yourself," said Jason. "You're a good man."
    "No shortage of good jacks."
    "Didn't say a good jack, I said a good man. There's a difference. Kate knows it, too."
     "Then why'd she change her mind all of a sudden? That ain't like her."
    Why indeed? Jason asked himself.
    When he asked Kate, having allowed her a suitable crying space before calling, and also having worked up an apology (which in the event went unsaid) for his meanness to her in Chile, she said only, "I was younger then."
    "She's the youngest," Candy chimed in.
    "Not by much."
    "By half a world," said Kate. "I'd never been away from home. Never been romanced–not seriously. You can't imagine what it is to be swept off your feet like that."
    "I've felt the slap of the broom on occasion."
    "And did you resist?" Candy asked him.
    "None too hard."
    "I had no reason to," said Kate. "I loved Alvaro. I still love him."
    "You barely know him. Are you sure–?"
    She half-smiled. "There's no mistaking it."
    "And Andrew?"
    "Yes," she said slowly, "I love him, too."
    "Which do you love better?"
    She looked him in the eye. "Which do you love better–Joshua or Jeremy?"
    Jason saw they were at a stalemate.
    Molly had heard whispers about Alvaro among the brides, but every time one of them mentioned his name one of the others shushed her, especially if she had noticed Molly listening. That afternoon Molly asked Biddie the reason. "Well," said Biddie, "he is a Spaniard."
    Molly silently corrected her: a Chilean was not a Spaniard. But aloud she said, "Does that make him a bad lot?"
    "Not a bad lot, just–a lot. Although his family is very well-to-do. And as you saw, he's very handsome."
    "Then why is everyone ashamed of him?"
    "It's not ashamed exactly. It's–it's something one simply doesn't talk about" (as she certainly was not).
    Molly stuck to her own view of it, which was this: The man had come for his beloved over wind-tossed seas, to bear her back across them to his native soil to be with him forever. She imagined a whole country full of men who looked like him, brown and proud and handsome; only in her imagination they also looked like someone else, and rather more so. "I'll bet he was her first love," she said rapturously. She had not yet had a first love herself, but most of the brides had; perhaps (the possibility had never before occurred to her) even Biddie. "Did you have one?" she asked. "Before Corky, I mean?"
    It took Biddie a moment to recover from the surprise of hearing Corky mentioned in such a connection. Then she nodded. "Yes. I did." She said it with a sigh. Molly asked what had happened to him. Biddie sighed again. "Maddie took him away."
    "You make her sound like a fatal disease."
    "Well...." Before she could pursue the analogy to its end, there came the inevitable, inescapable summons: "Brid-get!" Now that it had re-entered her life, it was proving just as grating as she had remembered it. Molly bestowed a look of sympathy on her, for which she was grateful, as she dashed off to answer the call.
    Molly's thoughts returned to Jericho. Surrounded by women at the wedding-to-have-been, he had had no time for her. But he had smiled at her once.
    –and did again in her dream that night. She was in the forest, moving without walking, but not floating, for she could feel the wet earth sink under her feet and the sharp blades of grass jab at them, stinging but not penetrating. Ahead loomed the leafy entrance to the glade, which was no longer dark but yellowy bright. She did not want to go there, yet she was moving toward it; and with the motion she suddenly somehow did want to, wanted it very much. The music she had heard before, she heard again; it was this that was moving her. She passed through the portal, happily expectant–
    And he was there. She had known he would be. The music was his–who else's could it have been?–but he was playing in an odd fashion, on all fours on the ground, with one knee bent in front of him and the other leg stretched out behind. The dulcimer lay under him in a line with his body, buried deep in the grass. He plucked at it without looking at it, gazing ahead of him and smiling. Then he turned his smile on her. His sweetly rounded lips pursed in what was almost a kiss–
    And on the instant, before she knew it, it was a kiss. Her eyes were closed but she could see without them, she was still moving forward, her hair falling back from her back-tilted heads, back and down, down, and not only her hair but herself, falling, fast and faster– "Jericho!" she cried, calling for him to come or to go away, she did not know which–
    And on the cry she woke safe in her bed. Had she cried aloud? She listened, breathless. The house was quiet. She had not, then; or no one had heard her. All was well. All well.... She shut her eyes again. "Jericho...." she repeated softly.
    "Jericho!" Jason boomed, and the forest (the real forest) echoed him. It was Monday, and the camp was in full swing, felling dozens of the wood giants, dismembering them, and hauling them away to be milled. Crashes, whacks, drones, creaks, shouts, and noises unspecifiable accompanied the running and climbing and sawing and pulling that proceeded all around and had had Jericho turning his head every which way each time he tried to knuckle down and get busy on the first task Jason had assigned him, which was to make a new camp sign on a set of boards nailed together crosswise to two posts. He had sketched out the letters in chalk to Jason's specifications, with the word "BOLT" four times as prominent as the rest.
    That was all that had been done when Joshua showed it to Jason. "He was here." But the frame now sat untended, and the paint bucket next to it untouched.
    "Jericho!" Jason called again, and again was answered only by echoes.
    Since it was Monday, Molly was at school. She liked it well enough; at least liked the schoolmarm and the schoolhouse and her schoolbooks; but her desk now seemed small, and in winter the room seemed dim. Liked it well enough, and was liked well enough herself, but her only real friend was two years younger; most of the girls were older, and behaved as if they were older still. None was exactly her age, and as a consequence she kept much to herself, drawing, reading, or just sitting and thinking–and, if she had nothing to think about, just sitting and looking pretty (she hoped).
    /all this day she thought about Jericho. Her mind kept drifting back to the first time she had seen him, to the look and the smile he had given her. None of them since had been so thrilling, for on that day he had discovered her for the first time, and she (though she knew this was vanity) had discovered something in herself. But enough, she was being foolish; those brides at the wedding, he had flirted with in a way he had not with her, for they were grown women, and he saw her as a child. Even when she grew up, she would never be as beautiful as they. He was an artist, and knew beauty when he saw it. Yet he had given her that look, and that smile; perhaps he liked her after all. No, it was impossible. But perhaps....
    Loves me, loves me not. She had never understood the meaning of that game before. The answer was up to chance; it could as easily be one as the other. But only for the inquirer; the one who loved or loved not surely knew; she had only to ask. But a girl dared not ask. If she got the wrong answer, what a fool she would look–Little Miss Vainglory! She had to wait for the man to tell her. But what if he never did? What if he were longing to, but thought she didn't like him? She would have to show him she did. But if he didn't like her, there she was looking the fool again! The cycle of terrors was unending.
    It was also eternal and universal, but if she had been told so she would not have believed. How could anyone else in the history of the world have ever felt it as deeply as she? And how could any man for whom a woman had suffered ever have been anything like him? At the end of all her travails she returned to the image of him impressed in her sketchbook, and in her head, the beautiful wild Indian about to–
    "Hey, Molly!"
    The voice startled her out of her reverie; not her first of the day. This one had come over her as she was walking home, gently swinging her lunch pail from one hand and cradling her books in the other. The encroacher was Brian, a boy from school, also on his way home and equipped similarly. He was what his elders would have called a nice-looking boy, but an uglier man who showed more sense would have appealed to her more. As he ran up she was blushing, but not over him, and for that reason returned his greeting in some annoyance.
    "Can I walk with you?" he asked, not hiding his eagerness. Molly pointed out that he would have to, since there was only the one path. "I could walk over here," he suggested. On that side as on the other, the ground was pitted and hummocky. "Or on my head, like this." He threw aside his apparatus and advanced on his hands a few yards till he struck a hole and toppled over. "Ouch!"
    "Are you all right?"
    "Sure!" He jumped up. "I've fell on my head lots of times. See?" He threw himself violently to the ground and quickly got to his feet. "Want to see me do it again?"
    "No!"
    His eyes darted about. "I can stick my head in the hollow of a tree. Watch me!"
    "Brian, don't!"
    It was of no use. She turned away and walked on. Nor did she look back when she heard his voice calling after her, "Hey, I think I'm stuck! Molly?"
    A little farther on she turned off into the wood–her wood–and followed her usual path to a hollow log–her log. She took her usual seat, chose a pencil from the case, opened her sketchbook, and began to draw. Normally she took her subject from among the woodlife, when she could find one that would stand or lie still long enough, but this afternoon she intended to devote to another study of Jericho.
    He stole up on her so quietly she did not hear him. "So you're an artist," he said, almost in her ear. She gave a little scream. When she saw who it was she shut her book and fumbled to put the pencil away. She knew she was blushing again but did not care now; she only hoped he had not seen the picture. In fact he had not, for he had little interest in anyone's work other than his own, whatever he might profess. "So am I," he said, granting her another of the smiles he could tell she liked. "Jericho Bolt." He offered her his hand and, when she had accepted it, ran his fingers softly over hers. "You have the touch," he said. "I can tell."
    She turned away shyly. He reached out, laid his fingers on her jaw, and drew it back toward him. She felt her heart hammering. He spied a leaf on her shoulder and brushed it off; his touch in that unexpected place made her start. Then he examined her face inch by inch. At long last he said, "I'd like to paint you. Might I, do you think?"
    She was entranced, beyond doubt, but she was also highly intelligent (as more than one man was later to discover, sometimes to their regret). "Like the painting you showed Jason?" she asked.
    Jericho smiled, and for once at least the smile was genuine. "Not exactly like. But you would be holding a flower." She reached into the grass beside her and plucked a small white blossom, of a type plentiful in the woods. She had never learned its name; perhaps it did not have one. Jericho quickly grabbed it from her, crumpled it in his hand, and tossed it down. The violence of it startled her. "Not that," he said. "It has to be the right flower." Noticing that she had pulled away a little, he smiled again, less sincerely than before. "But I'm spoiled," he said, "because I've seen you. And what flower can compare to that?"
    Flattered, flustered, flushing, she searched for something, anything, to say. "There's rhododendrons."
    "Hate rhododendrons."
    She searched further. "Do you always paint women with flowers?"
    "Before ever I had a girl, I had a garden. Girls and flowers are the only two admirable things in nature."
    The speech sounded too ready-made, as if it were one he was used to trotting out for show. "Not all girls are admirable," said Molly; she knew that much.
    "Nor are flowers. But when they are–ah!–they belong together. You will sit for me, won't you? Say you will or I'll be devastated." Molly felt she should not, but she desperately wanted to. She did not know why in either case; perhaps the root of each feeling lay in the other. Before she could make up her mind, he spoke again, as if she had said yes already. "Of course I'll have to speak to your sister first–Candy, is it?–and secure her approval. I want to be certain all the proprieties are observed."
    She stared at him in disbelief: the emptiness of the sentiment was just too obvious. But to Jericho her expression was meaningless. He fetched out his smile again.
    Lottie was of Molly's mind when she heard about his proposition. "...but he promised the proprieties would be observed," Candy concluded.
    "And you said yes."
    "I couldn't very well say no. Why, should I have?"
    Since she had entered the saloon she had seen only Lottie's back as one job after another had kept her from meeting Candy's eyes. Now she gave a broad shrug. "If a reformed floozie like me's no fit company for your sister–"
    "Lottie, please...."
    Lottie stopped, collected herself, and made sure her brain was centered before turning to address the supplicant face to face. "You were right–hurt feelings aside. And neither is he, if you want the floozie's opinion."
    "You mean because he paints women in their unmentionables? But he made sure I understood–"
    "Made sure of you. That's the part of it I don't like."
    "Am I being unusually stupid today? Because I'm not understanding you at all."
    "It wouldn't disturb me a bit if ladies' unmentionables were on his mind. It's no less than I'd expect from a long-haired, blue-eyed artist."
    "His eyes are grey." She was immediately sorry to have disclosed that piece of knowledge.
     "Grey, blue, lavender, what-have-you. I don't believe it for a second. Even less do I believe he gives a good spit for the proprieties. He's not just romancing Molly, he's romancing you."
    "But he's never–"
    "Not that kind of romancing. He's not out to grab a kiss–though I wouldn't put it past him if he saw some advantage in it. He's collecting admirers. I've seen the type before. But there's only one he'll ever be true to."
    "I am stupid today. Who–?"
    "His biggest admirer. Himself."
    "You think I should–?"
    "Forbid her to see him? Go ahead, if you want her to sneak out and do it every chance she gets."
    "Then what should I do?"
    "Same thing you did when she had the measles. Wait it out till she recovers."
    "If she recovers."
    "She will. Men like Jericho are like lights in the sky on the fourth of July. They flare up for a little while in a girl's fancy, then fade away. She'll recover. But I can't promise it won't hurt." The likelihood that it made Candy so unhappy for her sister, she failed to note the happier fact that Lottie and she were now speaking to each other again.
    The subject of their analysis meanwhile had found himself a makeshift studio for painting; his own work, that is, not what Jason had given him. That morning he had slipped away again to make the arrangements. The location was Ben's backroom, which Jericho had leased in exchange for a promise to do a portrait of the proprietor and his family for hanging over their mantel. Ben had dug out an easel from somewhere; Jericho had brought his pigments with him, and was fashioning a couple of canvases out of the tenting Ben kept on hand and pieces of wood from the scrap pile at Stempel's. The wood, he cut and nailed together into frames and stretched the fabric over them, working around from corner to corner.
    The task took him much of the afternoon, and he was still at it (and still playing hooky from camp) when Molly paid him a visit, having spied him unexpectedly when she stopped at the store for a penny candy, and of course having asked Mr. Perkins's permission first. In her overeagerness to please she pelted the artist with questions: How long was he going to use the backroom? Did he have to pay for it? Had he started any paintings yet? When would he start painting her? She was watching him from so near that as he was tightening the canvas he jerked his elbow back and nearly struck her in the face. He quickly inspected the fabric. "Girl, must you be underfoot the whole time? I might have torn it!" The danger of injury to her, he did not mention.
    He scarcely heard her quavering answer: "Sorry, I didn't realize I was bothering you. I'll leave." She stood a few seconds as if expecting him to stop her, but he took no notice. If she had she left by the door at the rear, which led to the lane that ran between the backs of the shops and the little hill behind, she would have seen a nautical man of her acquaintance peering in at the window, as best he could manage through its grimy coat. He had determined to watch out for her whenever that fella was about, and watch he did.
    Molly came home in despair, but not in tears, for they would have betokened disappointed hopes and she knew she was beyond hope. Had Jericho had any feeling for her, he could not have used her so cruelly. He had made her feel more than ever like a child, though she did not put it to herself quite that way. She searched for Kate to help her bear her burden.
    Kate was out. In her absence the most sympathetic face in the house hung on Biddie, whom Molly found busy in the parlor. She had never seen a woman switch a feather duster with such abandon. On asking where her relatives were, she learned they were out to tea. "Couldn't join them myself," Biddie said in jubilation. "Had to dust. Lucky me!" She allowed herself a high chortle. "Bet I know where you've been," she said coyly. "Off posing for that Jericho man."
    Molly shook her head. "He hasn't found a flower he likes yet." She doubted now he ever would.
    "Has he seen the rhododendrons?"
    "Oh, Biddie!" Molly flung herself onto the sofa. "I wish Candy were around."
    "She is."
    "She is, but she isn't." That had sounded like a criticism. Molly did not want Biddie to think her impertinent. "I'm sorry. I know you're her friend, but–"
    Biddie understood. "Your sister has a lot of responsibilities. With all the brides to tend to–"
    "She was the same before the brides. Don't you remember? She's busy even when she hasn't anything to be busy at. It's the way she is. I would talk to Kate, only she's not here. Probably at the harbor looking out at his ship."
    That had been an easy guess: Kate had seldom been anywhere else since Alvaro's arrival. Molly had gone down on Monday to have a look herself. His two-masted schooner yacht looked too delicate to have sailed all the way from Chile, but she liked to think it had, and at the end of three weeks would whisk Kate back with it, slicing into the undulant waters and churning them into foam. He would be standing at the prow, staring out to the horizon, his burnished cheeks feeling the wind's harsh caress, like a buccaneer captain with his lady at his side. The vision momentarily returned to her, only the couple in it was Jericho and herself. The distance between this and her real situation doubled the weight of her grief. "Biddie," she moaned, "please be my big sister just this once and tell me what I'm to do!" The last word elongated itself into two syllables.
    "Your sister?" Biddie's face lit up. "Oh, my! How flattering that you'd have enough–of course I could never replace–but if you feel that I–your big sister–goodness!" Reaching the request at last, she repeated it slowly. "Tell you...what you're...to do." Her "do" was also longer than the average. "About Jericho, of course."
    Molly's eyes went wide. "How did you know?"
    "A sister knows," Biddie said owlishly. "What...should...you...do?" She repeated it once or twice more. She sounded as if her deliberations might need aiding, and Molly asked her straight out what she would do in her place. "Me? Me?" The idea made Biddie tingle. Her and Jericho; though of course it would not be Jericho. "Goodness!" She noticed Molly staring sideways at the floor, as if impatient of waiting. "Calm down, now!" she commanded herself. "What I would do...what I would do...." There erupted a giggle. Molly made to get up. Biddie hurried to conclude. "...is put him out of my mind. There!"
    "But I can't!" Molly could have wailed, rent her clothes, pulled out her hair, but none of it would have availed her, and anyhow those were things silly girls did, not she. "You don't know what it's like to feel this way about someone."
    "No," Biddie agreed. Her eye landed on a framed portrait of Jeremy Bolt atop an end table. She gave a little sigh. "No, I suppose I don't."
    "Brid-get!" came a dreaded voice, and then, after Biddie had not answered immediately, another: "Darling, don't you hear Mama calling?" Molly saw Biddie go hollow, like a sack emptied of flour. She gave her a pat of encouragement, which became a hug. "I'm lucky in my sisters," she said. "Both of them."
    The two had started off in their separate directions when she remembered why she had needed advice so urgently. A dance was coming up on Friday, and Jericho was sure to be there. "What do I do?"
    "Dance!" Biddie said on her way out.
    "But what if he doesn't ask me?"
    The answer floated back from the hall: "Then dance with whoever does!"
    The dances were held in the cookhouse of Stempel's mill, as were the town meetings, exhibitions (in principle; so far there had been none), and of course the mill hands' meals when the hall was not otherwise in use. It had been built a year before for a conference of mill owners Stempel had arranged. Having learned most of their mills had separate cookhouses, he had designed one bigger than any to show them he and Seattle (which were one in his mind when it was running in this vein) could best anybody else in the lumber game. Why, didn't they have the tallest trees, the fastest millers, the strongest loggers, the prettiest women (since the brides), and the biggest cookhouse in the Northwest, or for that matter the world?
    This boastful mood seized him two or three times a year and always left him wondering how much it owed to Jason's influence, though he did not impart the suspicion to anyone else, least of all Jason.
    On Friday afternoon the cookhouse was readied for the dance. Stempel's men stacked the long tables on one side, the brides' dance committee fluttered in and pinned up paper accordions cut into floral shapes (the excuse for the dance this time was to welcome the coming of spring), and a little later the victualing committee enlisted the men to cart over pans and plates of home-cooked goodies. (By the way, two of the brides were beginning to compile the group's recipes, which Seattle's first press would later publish, but that is another story.)
    Soon after the workday ended, everyone flocked to the cookhouse: a stream of loggers from the mountain, a stream of girls from the dormitory, a stream of mill hands from the bunkhouse after they had changed out of their workclothes into slightly cleaner attire, and people from cabins and farms around, old as well as young, because many of those still loved to dance and the ones who could dance no longer still loved to watch the others. Everyone in Seattle was there, almost.
    Two of the brides had stayed behind, each independently of the other. Both repaired to the kitchen at the same time to scrape together some supper from the scraps the victualing committee had left them (by the consensus of the dance guests, the committee had outdone themselves this month), and they met unexpectedly, provoking a mutual shriek, followed by laughter as each recognized the other. Almost in the same breath, both asked, "But why aren't you at the dance?"
    "Andrew asked me," said Kate, "but I couldn't go because of Alvaro. And if Alvaro had asked I couldn't because of Andrew."
    "Because my sister's there," said Biddie, "and my mother went to bed early. So I'm free, for a little while."
    "Wish I were." Kate smiled sadly. "Two good men, and I have to choose between them."
    Biddie thought about this. "You wouldn't care to pass the other one along, would you?"
    A whoop of laughter broke from Kate unexpectedly. Biddie was good at pulling people out of their doldrums. "Let's eat," she said, and they attacked the larder with a will.
    The dance was sailing along in a fine breeze. The floorboards might have been greased with neatsfoot, so fleetly did the dancers slide over them. Fiddle, concertina, harmonica, tinwhistle, and, luck of all lucks, a banjo spun out jigs, reels, waltzes, and two-steps in such unity, and each following so fast on the previous one, it seemed as if they were not making the music but only plunging into a stream of melody that made up the very air of the room.
    Jericho was there, all right, and the center of attention as always. Before each dance the girls would flock to him and one or another of them would dart or wriggle in ahead of the rest to secure him for her partner, and next time it would be someone else, and the losers would select from the leavings, of whom there were plenty. "The gals all want to dance with him," complained Sam, one of the loggers.
    "Can you blame 'em? I would, too," Corky said. "If I was a gal, that is," he added quickly.
    "Wish I could hate him," said Sam. "Then I could fight him."
    "He's the best at that, too. Didn't you hear about that donnybrook he had with the brothers?"
    The two watched him enviously but without rancor.
    Molly was sitting at the side, a true wallflower, and trying her best not to look at him. She had not spoken to him since the day he had brusquely dismissed her, and she was afraid he might still be mad. Well, she didn't care if he was (she told herself); he meant nothing to her. But what if he asked her to dance? Her legs might collapse under her. But it didn't matter, he wouldn't ask, he would ignore her. And how could she bear that? But (she reminded herself again) she didn't care. She kept herself from looking at him, lest her look reveal too much or too little of what she was feeling.
    Eventually she could not help looking. She did her best to appear aloof, as if the turn of the head were merely fortuitous; really, she might have been looking at anybody. She found him looking back at her. She took in a rush of air, without intending to; smiled briefly, also without intending to; and looked away. But she had seen him smile back. There was no mistake.
    The dance ended, and he started toward her; no mistake there, either; but his admirers interposed themselves between. As the music started again, one of them attached herself to him, and over her head he made a face of apology at Molly. She almost missed it for having to peer around someone who had stepped right in front of her, blocking the view–the fool! She became aware that he was speaking.
    "I asked if you'd care to dance," he said. Looking up, she was surprised to see it was Brian. She had never before seen him with his hair plastered down. "Dance?" he repeated. After a deep sigh that made him feel uncertain of his standing with her, she accompanied him out onto the floor. She had the air of one enduring an unpleasant chore, or of one obeying advice she felt duty-bound to honor without seeing how it could possibly profit her. Also, she feared when Jericho saw her dancing with another man (if you could call Brian that) he might assume she was doing so by choice and would not rather be dancing with him.
    Her secret thoughts about him, Jericho apprehended at a glance. He had seen them before many times and they always amused him, both in themselves and as playthings for his self-regard. He loved to tickle their enthusiasm for him, to tantalize and lightly torment it; he enjoyed the game and so did they; enjoyment all round.
    He also enjoyed dancing. He liked to forget for a little while that he was earth-bound, and to feel a king with a roomful of subjects eager for his favor. Partner after partner he would lead in delightful dalliance through the prefigured courses, earning their admiration by the winged grace of his skipping step. He was made for dancing.
    Molly loved it, too, but for different reasons. The dances were the brightest and happiest of times, when hard-working people forgot about work and neighbors forgot about their differences to throw themselves unreservedly into having fun, and she herself was allowed to spend freely of her energy, which she had to suppress at other times, and give it rein to move her as the music bade.
    The dances were the only occasions when she did not mind the local boys. Their energy served them well, too, and many made robust partners. But she would as soon have danced with the other girls, or the younger men, or Miss Essie's husband the Reverend, who soon after their marriage had begun to attend the dances for the first time and surprised everyone (except his wife) by throwing off the gravity of his office to break out in the nimble thrusts and parries of heel and toe that had plied many a floor in his youth. He was young again at these dos; so were Miss Essie and those others who were not young already. And those who were leapt and pranced and whirled fearlessly, often straying from their places in the sets as the good angel of their youth inspired them.
    Always the evening seemed to last forever–yet not a second too long–and left Molly wondering how she would be able to endure the weeks of waiting till the next one. Yet endure she did, from dance to dance, and so the current of Seattle's social life had carried her to this. And it was different. How she knew, she could not have said, but the awareness charged her with something like fear. But if it were not fear, what was it?
    All day Jericho had dominated her thoughts, sometimes in face and form, sometimes as an insensible but impending presence. But he was not the only source of what she was feeling. Everything seemed changed. In the hour before the dance as she had stood dressing in front of her mirror, the very air seemed to stifle her. It was still (because most of the other girls had left already) but also warm and close. (And if it was like that there, how much more so it would be at the dance!) As she buttoned up her dress, the gayest and frilliest of her frocks, she realized it looked too small somehow, though she had not grown since she had last worn it. She felt a sudden urge to change, but the only two that were nicer would not do; one, her Sunday dress, was too sober and the other was too tight to dance in.
    Unlike most girls, who would have spent an hour in fruitless indecision, she was practical enough to see that the one she had put on was the only possible choice and resigned herself to it. She did try to pull it up at the shoulders, down at the waist, out at the hips–something–but the dress was put together so sturdily (she had sewn it herself) it resisted all efforts at improvement. So she turned to her hair. It was already brushed, and over-brushed; perhaps if she pinned it up? Or back? Or...? No matter how she repositioned it, it flopped down about her fingers in the same lazy way. She gave up with a sigh and studied her reflection. Had she looked like this yesterday? Well, she would not let it bother her; she would have a good time. She always did, at the dances.
    But tonight was different, for she was different, the hall was even warmer than she had expected, and Jericho was there. But she was not dancing with him, she was dancing with silly Brian. "Reel!" the fiddler had called out, but Molly, in her distraction, had not heard. Brian had; that was what had moved him to hurry over and beg the dance of her. He was best at reels. In fact he was a fair dancer all round, and Molly had enjoyed partnering him when they were kids (last year, that is) but she no longer remembered it. Brian did not presume to stand in her good graces on the strength of those past times; indeed he hardly remembered them himself, for Molly looked a different girl now, someone he had never known but seemed somehow to want to.
    The dancers were congregating in sets of ten, with the men and the women aligned in facing columns. Those who preferred a particular place, top, bottom, or middle, rushed to claim it, and within a minute Brian and Molly found the sets full all around them. Miss Essie waved them over to the west side of the room; her set was short a couple at the tail. They ran to fill the empty places. Molly felt happier now. She was about to dance, and Miss Essie was one of her favorite people. She turned to thank her and to look up the line beyond her. The other women were three brides she was not very close to.
    She looked across to the men. At the head (where he always stood if he could ) was Sam, who was small and agile, and next to him Frenchy, who was big and clumpish. She had danced with Frenchy before, and shuddered for her poor feet when his turn came to reel all the women. Next to him, grinning down at her, was–oh, no! She had not known he was part of this set! If she had...well, what would she have done differently? His turn would come, too; she blushed to think of it. At her blush his grin grew wider. She tried to smile in return, but was she smiling? His own smile changed to one of compassion and he nodded a little, as if to say: I understand, I'll protect you. Her fear began to fade.
    Now the music had started up and she was forced to look across to her partner, who had been looking in the same direction as she to find out what was causing the changes in her countenance. He faced her and each linked hands with the dancers on both sides as the fiddler's bow dove into the tune. Jericho smiled to hear it, for it was a favorite of his, whose lyrics (by another roguish Scot) sang inside his head as it played: "My love she's but a lassie yet...."–how apt to the occasion! Two lines he sang aloud when their time came round: "Gae seek for pleasure where ye will, But here I never missed it yet." It had long been a motto of his.
    The dance began. Hands linked, the lines of men and women tripped lightly toward each other and back. Then they let go of one another's hands and tripped out again, this time to meet their partners. Molly lifted her right hand, Brian his, the hands joined, and he led her in a circle one way and, after switching to left hands, back the other. She glanced over at Jericho. He had his eye on her, and it was an admiring eye. She became aware of her own grace, and with the awareness her step faltered, but she fast regained the beat and danced on.
    She stepped out from Brian and pranced backwards around him, as he did with her. Then they and the other couples returned to their lines as Sam and his partner Olive locked elbows, turned about, and then parted, he to honor each of the women identically, she each of the men. Molly had always enjoyed being reeled by Sam, for she had always been able to match his vigor with her own, but tonight he seemed a shade too violent and left her feeling a little bruised. She rubbed her arm and looked over to find Jericho watching her again with an expression of concern, as if he wished he could reach out and heal her hurt. And she did not doubt he could.
    When Sam and Olive had finished their tour they paraded back, reeled each other again, and then made their separate ways down the lines as before, but turning the opposite way, which left Molly dizzier than before. The feeling unnerved her; it was not like her to get dizzy. On ending this second tour the couple sashayed back up the middle, with a comically grave nod to each as they passed. Molly realized the lines looked just like those that formed outside the church after a wedding, and she felt a pang of regret that Kate had been deprived of that. At the head of the set the first couple parted and returned to the tail–Sam behind the men's backs, Olive behind the women's–and there joined hands with arms upraised, forming an arch.
    Along with this came the part that to Molly always seemed magical somehow. One by one the other couples–Frenchy and Bella, Jericho and Elspeth, the Reverend and Miss Essie, Brian and herself–followed the first down the backs of the columns, which dissolved even with the act, and around and under the arch (the taller ones having to stoop) to re-form them, this time with Frenchy and Bella at the head. Thus the sequence began again, and "She's but a Lassie" did likewise.
    By now everyone was in high spirits, pulses were racing, and Jericho's looks to Molly were nearly continuous. Whenever she looked at him he was looking back. She could not help believing she was the object of his special interest, and they began a silent dialogue. When her partner lost his place, Jericho laughed and she laughed with him. When his partner clutched his hand too tight, or turned him rather than wait for him to turn her, they laughed again. When he had to evade a kiss from Bella, as from Olive before her (both had joined the set just because he was in it), she expressed silent disapproval. When she succeeded in keeping her toes out from under Frenchy's, he expressed admiration. And with every such expression, the two of them grew closer.
    Then came his turn at the head of the line. Molly no longer felt shy, but her heart still beat fast. She was hardly aware of Brian's presence any more, and he noticed it–as how could he not with her eyes returning every few seconds to that blond man he did not recognize? Elspeth noticed, too–as how could she not? The two were smiling at each other openly, expectantly; within seconds he would come down and turn her, and he was as eager for it as she was, or so his look told her. First he reeled Elspeth, whose face was set in a scowl. Then Miss Essie. And then....
    He did not reel her; he took her in his arms with one hand at her back, the other squeezing hers as she closed his on his shoulder, and he swung her–swung her!–and so swiftly, he was able to do it a second time. He sang the next line of the song in her ear, bringing his lips so close they almost grazed it: "The minister kissed the fiddler's wife." Then he danced on to the next woman, leaving Molly in a state she had not language or experience to describe. The room glowed so, they must have brought more lights in. The fiddle had never sounded so keenly in tune, or the whistle so high and sweet. She was his favorite; she knew it now beyond doubt. If she could have seen his face just then, and been able to read it.... But it was hidden to her in both respects.
    It was, however, observed by others. Candy was manning (or womaning) the punchbowl near the doors. Clancey was standing by it, both to avail himself of the punch and to keep an eye on one certain fella. He carried a flask in his coat to add spice to the beverage on offer, which was always mixed to a recipe that was strictly temperance, but he refrained from the temptation till his duty was discharged. Jeremy was standing at the doors waiting impatiently for Candy's relief to arrive. He had watched Jericho during the first dance and felt a foolish pride in him. He wanted to jump onto one of the tables and yell out, Hey, everyone, see that fella who dances so fine? That's my brother!
    Jason and Joshua had hardly been aware of him. They had been dancing at the other side of the room, and when a Bolt got to dancing, the world might go hang for all he cared. Joshua had chosen Lottie for a partner (he always did; she was his favorite), and the women's lines faced east, so that she could not see Jericho's proximity to Molly. If she had she might have kept a protective eye out herself.
    Clancey would not have minded spinning Lottie about the floor for a jig or a polka, but that would have to wait for some other night. The food tables commanded a clear view of Jericho. When Molly ran over to join his set Clancey thought nothing of it: dancing was harmless enough. When the band struck up the Burns he brightened visibly, and his pleasure increased as he watched Molly, brimful of youth and grace (when she was not worrying about being graceful) spring forward and back, around and back around, as the music bore her. She was one for the dancing, to be sure. He smiled to see it.
    But as he continued to watch, his smile subsided and his face puckered up in a quizzical look, which settled into a frown. Candy, standing idly and tapping to the music, happened to glance at him. The thundercloud she perceived in his features led her to follow his line of sight to its object. After a moment her brow clouded, too. Jeremy, in desultory conversation with Corky (who in Biddie's absence lacked the will to join in the dancing), happened to glance at Candy, from her to Clancey, and from him to what was passing on the floor. This, he viewed at first with incomprehension, then with concern, and at last, as his understanding of it became complete, with mounting anger.
    What the three of them saw, colored for each by his own experience, was a young rooster strutting vainly, bent on captivating an easily captivated girl by the silliest of means (silly, that is, if you were not the one they were being worked on)–a look, a wink, a smile, a glancing touch–and making her the most admired, and rightly admired, girl in the world. They saw his campaign as it proceeded step by step, and saw its success–and also saw what she did not, his preening over its success. Candy was somber, Clancey contemptuous, Jeremy–was Jeremy. No sooner had the dance ended but he galloped out to Jericho, turned him roughly by the shoulder, and marched him outside. Jericho complied, out of curiosity mostly. After allowing himself to be taken a decent distance from the festivities, he wheeled about to ask what the matter was.
    The huge shadow of the mill, quiet at this time of night, loomed over them. The voices from the cookhouse sounded as if they were far out on the Sound. Neither had seen whether anyone had noticed their leaving; at any rate, no one had followed them. Jeremy would not have cared if they had. "Leave her be," he said, in a tone seldom heard on his lips. "You hear? You just leave her be."
    "Who?" asked Jericho, genuinely puzzled. Then he made the obvious connections. "Molly? You're joking!"
    "I saw what you were doin' to her. She's too young for you to be leadin' her on like that."
    "Not so young," Jericho said offhandedly. "Some places, girls get married at her age."
    "Not here, and not her. And when she is, it won't be to you."
    "Step down from your preacher's box, mister. I ain't got my eye on your–say, what is she to you, anyhow?"
    "You were makin' sure she had hers on you. I saw you!"
    Jericho bridled. "Don't meddle in what don't concern you." He started back toward the hall. Jeremy grabbed him by the shoulder. Jericho shook him off as a dog shakes off water. "I ain't gonna have to fight you again, am I? I'm tired from dancin'."
    Jeremy did not want another fight, but he could not let Jericho go on as he was. "You know she likes you, and you're fannin' the fire. It's pure conceit." Jericho smiled at that, as he did at everything. This time he meant to exhibit a careless vanity, but tired as he was, he did not entirely succeed, and something else showed through, which Jeremy perceived. "Or maybe...." He thought it out slowly. "Maybe it's the opposite." His brother looked slightly uneasy. "You need somebody to admire you. But it's as much use as you have for them, so that isn't enough and you have to keep looking. Looking for somebody whose good opinion means something to you. You're not proud of yourself at all." He shook his head. "I'm not mad at you now. I just feel sorry for you."
    Jericho had listened without answering because no answer had come to him and consequently he wanted it to appear to Jeremy that his accusation did not deserve an answer. "You feel sorry for me?" was the best he could muster. But that was not enough. Suddenly he found himself shouting. "Look to yourself!" He could not stop there, either. "I ain't the one who sold out my brothers for five hundred dollars!"
    Jeremy was shocked. "That was a secret between us! You promised!"
    "No more," said a deep voice behind them. So someone had followed them, after all. They knew whose voice it was, and they turned to face him. "What five hundred dollars?" Jason asked. His voice sounded easy, but Jeremy recognized the low throb that ran through it, like the rumble before an earthquake. He did not know how to answer. Jason asked again, more sharply.
    "Best 'fess up, Jeremy," Jericho said. Jeremy stared at him, not quite understanding. "All right," he declared as if reluctantly, "if you won't tell him, I will." He turned to Jason with an air of forthrightness. "That's the money he got paid when you all went off to fetch the brides. The whole time, he was really working for Stempel."
    Jason stood as if thunderstruck. "Stempel!" He turned to Jeremy. "Is that true?" Jeremy's face carried the answer. Without waiting further, Jason trudged back to the hall. Jeremy stared in disbelief at Jericho, who wore the look of one saddled with a regrettable but necessary task, tinged with a frown of disapproval. Jericho disapproved of him? Flabbergasted, outraged, Jeremy was incapable of clear speech, and foresaw that it would not matter what he said, anyway, now the trap had been sprung. Had it been sprung deliberately? He did not know, and never would. Probably Jericho did not know.
    The music inside had started again. Jason called to Joshua from the doors. He called more than once. When Joshua appeared he was breathing fast. "I'm surprised at you, brother. Don't you know it's bad manners to break in on a dance?"
    "It's Bolt brothers' business."
    His tone and his look sobered Joshua at once. "So late?"
    "Later than you or I had any notion." He returned to the others and ordered them to follow him. One of them hesitated. Jason looked back. "You, too, Jericho. You're family now." Joshua did not like that. He looked to Jeremy, but Jeremy would not meet his eye. Jason led them down to the engine room on the pier, where he had held private conferences before.
    By now a few others, having seen that something was up, had left the hall to find out what it was; these included Candy and the captain. Stempel, working late, had been leaving his office just as the argument broke out and had stood in the shadow of the mill, listening. He continued listening now. The voices in the engine room, when they rose loud enough to be heard, could not be understood. After a few minutes the door flew open and Jeremy stormed out. The next words, Jason's, were plain enough to hear. "Go on!" he bellowed. "Collect what's yours and clear out!" He emerged onto the pier and cupped his hands around his mouth as he shouted a last warning. "And don't set foot on our mountain again!" A shiver ran down Candy's back.
    Joshua emerged after him. Straining, the listeners could just make out their words. "Mighty harsh," Joshua said.
    "He's made his own bed." Jason's voice was hard, unbending.
    "Can we manage without him? There's always been three Bolt brothers."
    "There's still three." Jason looked toward the door, through which the newest of their brothers stepped out, as onto a stage. Jason clasped him on the shoulder. "Jericho," he said, with all the ceremony he could summon, "welcome to the business." Jericho's face showed his gratification, which was considerable. He looked to Joshua for a confirming smile, which Joshua could not quite muster. To please Jason he lay a tentative hand on Jericho's free shoulder, but as Jericho reached up to seize it he pulled it away.
    The two men stared at each other, sizing each other up. "The business," Joshua repeated.

Part Three

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