We barely made it into the house with the basin, the bowl, and our peanut crop—followed in short order by Germain, Jemmy, Fanny, Mandy, Aidan McCallum, and Aodh MacLennan, splattered with rain and with arms full of wet vegetables from the garden.

What with one thing and another—grinding the peanuts, putting the risen bread to bake, washing dirt from the young turnips, saving the greens in a bowl of cold water to keep them from wilting, handing fresh small knobby carrots out to the children, who ate them like candy, then slicing the fresh bread and assembling sandwiches, while roasting sweet potatoes in the ashes and making a warm bacon dressing for the cooked greens—there was no further conversation between me and Jamie about Frank’s book. And if anyone stood behind me, he was considerate enough to give me elbow room.

IT WENT ON raining through supper, and after ascertaining that the McCallums and the MacLennans wouldn’t be worrying where their boys were, Jamie brought down the mattresses and all of the children bedded down together in a damp, warm heap before the hearth.

Jamie had made a fire in our bedroom, and the scent of dried fir kindling and hickory wood overlaid the lingering turpentine scent of the fresh timbers. He was lying on the bed, clad in his nightshirt and smelling pleasantly of warm animals, cold hay, and peanut butter, and thumbing idly through my Merck Manual, which I’d left on the bedside table.

“Trying the Sortes Virgilianae, are you?” I asked, sitting down beside him and shaking my hair loose from its knot. “Most people use the Bible for that, but I suppose Merck might do just as well.”

“Hadna thought of that,” he said, smiling, and closing the book, handed it to me. “Why not? You choose, then.”

“All right.” I weighed the book in my hands for a moment, enjoying the tidy heft of it and the feel of the pebbled cover under my fingertips. I closed my eyes, opened the book at random, and ran my finger down the page. “What have we got?”

Jamie took his spectacles off and leaned over my arm, peering at the spot I’d marked.

“The symptomology of this condition is both varied and obscure, requiring extensive observation and repeated testing before a diagnosis can be made,” he read. He glanced up at me. “Aye, well, that’s about the size of it, no?”

“Yes,” I said, and closed the book, feeling obscurely comforted. Jamie gave a mild snort, but took the book from me and put it back on the table.

“Ye can take the extensive observations as given,” he said dryly. “Repeated testing, though …” His expression changed, turning inward. “Aye, maybe. Just maybe. I’ll need to think on that.”