The dogs are lying at the front of the cabin. They rise suddenly, their hair stiffening. They bark and continue barking. Rosalie feels a panic in her chest. She goes upstairs for June, shakes him up, fetches Father’s unloaded rifle for him. They stand together on the doorstep in their nightclothes, listening to the dogs.

Mother joins them in the doorway, Grandfather a moment later. Suddenly Rosalie sees how frail Grandfather has become. If they’re about to be killed, he won’t be the man to stop it.

Figures appear, emerging from the darkness and the trees. They clarify into a man, a woman, and an enormous number of children. The woman seems misshapen until she comes close enough that they see she’s carrying a baby in her arms. Closer, and they see that all are dressed in the most outlandish fashion—theater costumes from completely different plays, dramas and comedies and Greek tableaus. One boy is wearing women’s pantaloons, far too big. He holds them up with his hand as he walks. He’s barefoot. The man is dressed in a long-tailed green velvet coat. The woman wears a toga with a shawl around her shoulders—half goddess and half Irish washerwoman. The dogs growl and snap, but the people come ahead regardless.

Rosalie has never seen these people before; neither has June, nor Mother. The man speaks first to June and his rifle. “You’d be young Junius,” he says. “I’m your uncle Mitchell.”

The woman looks past Rosalie’s head to where Grandfather stands. “Hello, Father,” she says. “Here we are. All the way from England, through such trials as you can scarcely imagine.”

“I’ve no welcome for you,” Grandfather tells her. “Keep walking.” He steps back inside and closes the door. June and Rosalie have been left on the wrong side of it just as the rain arrives.

—

James Mitchell is a man of no accomplishments and no employment. Long ago he was a bootblack who persuaded Father’s sister to marry him. It’s one thing for Grandfather to admire the democratic spirit of the American revolutionaries. It’s quite another to see his daughter elope against his explicit command, and marry so far beneath her. Grandfather immediately disinherited her and, until this night, he hasn’t spoken a word to her. Nor will he again.

They will soon learn that, sometime during that terrible visit to England, before Henry had fallen ill, Father had gone secretly to see his sister. Distressed by her circumstances, the extreme poverty and the abusive, drunken husband, he’d given her enough money to bring herself and her children to Maryland. This money came with the specific proviso that her husband not be one of the party. This money was meant for Jane Mitchell’s escape.

Obviously, Aunt Mitchell has ignored these instructions. They made it to New York on Father’s money, but arrived as paupers, with no luggage and no provision. On they came, sometimes on foot and sometimes on charity in a passing coach or wagon, to Baltimore. There, their only clothing in rags, they’d applied to the local theater company and, on the strength of Father’s name, got the bits of costumes they are wearing plus directions to the farm.