The flaming hills of early October died abruptly. At last, the dreary rains of late fall turned into the first sputterings of snow until the world was beautiful once more with the silver branches of the bare trees and the lush tones of the evergreens against the gleaming banks of snow, so white you had to squint your eyes against it on a sunny day.

The master put the wagons and carriages in the shed and set Willie to cleaning the mud off wheels and undercarriages, and the sleds were brought out. The stagecoach came less often now. Though there was plenty of work to be done in the short winter days, there were not many guests to feed or look after. The few who came seemed as closed and secretive as the freezing grayness of the weather, bent on some narrow business of their own. “Slave catcher,” Triphena was heard to mutter after one dark, sleekly well-dressed gentleman departed. “I don’t like the smell of them.”

If she had been home, she might have spent the dark afternoons spinning or sewing, but the mistress bought her woolens and calicoes at the village stores. She did not even card or spin the wool from their own sheep. It was sent to Nashua or Lowell, where it could be done in a gigantic water-powered mill. All the wealth that had once been Vermont’s seemed to be trickling south or west. In fact, the master was heard to say that come spring, the sheep would be sold, because the western railroads were bringing such cheap wool to the Lowell factories that a New England sheep farmer could no longer compete.

It was what her own father had said, but his flock had been much smaller than Cutler’s, so their family had felt the pinch years sooner.

One late morning, as she was peeling and cutting potatoes for the boiled noon meal, she felt a presence behind her shoulder. Then someone tweaked her right braid. She looked about, annoyed, expecting to say a sharp word to the bothersome Willie, when she saw it was Charlie.

She stood up, the knife and potato still in her hand. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, you surprised me.”

He was grinning. “I meant to,” he said. “You look well.”

“You’re taller,” she said, but it was a lie. He looked smaller than she remembered, but he would have been pained to hear that. “How are you, Charlie?” It wasn’t a pleasantry, she really needed to know.

“Stil hopping,” he said with a grin. “Work is slow in winter, so they let me come to see how you were.”

Now that she was seeing him at last, she hardly knew what to say. “Have you heard anything from Mama and the babies?” she asked.

He shook his head. His hair was longer, but neater somehow. A better barber than she had trimmed it, she realized with a pang.