The weather did hold for another three days, and then the blizzard of the winter came. The stock was watered and fed, the cows were milked, but there was little that Otis and Enoch, the two hired men, could do outdoors, so the kitchen was crowded with men, seeking the warmth of the great fire as they made spills for the March sugaring, whittling four-inch segments of sumac, which they hollowed out with red-hot pokers. She thought of how she and Charlie had made spills last winter for tapping their own maples. Their own efforts were so childish compared to the practiced skill of these hired men.

She could hardly move in the kitchen, large as it was, without tripping over the gangly legs of a man or having one of them bar her path to the fireplace with a poker. Triphena grumbled continuously under her breath and rejoiced audibly when they left to tend to the livestock.

But Lyddie didn’t mind so much. Their bodies were in the way of everything she had to do, but as they worked they talked, and the talk was a welcome window into the world beyond the tavern.

“They caught another slave up near Ferrisburg.”

“The legislature can say all they want to about not giving up runaways, but as long as them rewards are high, somebody’s going to report them.”

“Well, you gotta decide.” Enoch spat at the fire. His spit sizzled like fat on a hot griddle. “Who’s in charge? Down in Washington slavery is the law of the land. Man buys a horse fair and legal, he sure as hell going after it if it bolts. You pay for something, it’s yours. If the law says a man can own slaves, he’s got a right to go after them if they bolt. Ain’t no difference I can see.”

“And if I happen to return somebody’s property, seems to me I deserve a reward.” Otis paused to pull his poker from the flames and thrust it smoking through the center of the sumac spill he held. “None of them high and mighty folks in Montpelier offered to pay me a hundred dollars not to report a runaway, now have they?”

“Well, this weather they likely to be froze ’fore you find ’em. You reckon the reward holds froze or thawed?”

“Why you suppose anyone’d try to run in winter? Don’t they know how easy it is to track a critter in the snow?”

“Way I figure, it’s not snowing down there where they come from, ey? They don’t know what it’s like up this way. They just see a chance to run, they run. They don’t give it good thought.”