JOSEPH stood on the wharf at Georgetown, awaiting the brig, and he was surrounded by Alstons. Theo counted them ruefully while the vessel slid up to the dock: Colonel William, John Ashe and Sally, William Algernon, Lady Nisbett, Charlotte, a collection of milling children, and black servants.

Her heart sank. She had pictured their reunion otherwise, this reunion that was to start for them a new and closer married life.

And Joseph had altered; for a moment she had scarcely recognized him. He had always been swarthy, but now in his new indigo-blue suit his skin had a greenish tinge. He had grown fatter. And why, she thought impatiently, had he had his hair cut so short as to stand up like a fan from its own wiry coarseness?

They greeted each other with constraint, exchanged a brief kiss, before all the relatives crowded around to exclaim over the baby. Theo was once more swamped in Alstons. Fifteen minutes after she had landed, Colonel Alston was talking rice again. 'We have had a most unusual fall freshet, my dear. We thought for a few hours that the fields at Rose Hill would be quite ruined, but fortunately it subsided in time. How, by the way, is the price holding in New York?'

It was the only question they asked her about her voyage. Their lives, she thought, were bounded by the Waccamaw Neck, even though their bodies could and did move around elsewhere, occasionally.

Theo and Joseph went home to the Oaks by barge, poling and rowing up the river even as she had descended it over six months before. Only then, she had not yet had the baby. She looked at him, rosy and sleeping in Eleanore's arms, his deep auburn curls stirred enchantingly under his little cap by the breeze off the water. He shouldn't be caught by the deadly monotony of this country; he should grow up, in spite of them, alert and broad-visioned, worthy of his Burr name. If only—if only——A confused terror stole over her. A baby's life was tenuous, so easily assailed by the creeping evils that lived in these swamps. On the ship she had felt brave, confident that nothing could touch them. A little effort of the will, a few precautions, and this place would be as healthy as anywhere. After all, there were diseases and fevers in the North too.