Cap Huff cleared his throat noisily. “That thing on the table looks something like a pitcher.” His eyes became more protuberant. “Ain’t it maybe a pitcher?”

Nathaniel jumped up and gave each of them a tumbler of flip, and when he had refilled our own glasses, Cap Huff held out his glass to be filled again.

“Now,” I said, “I want to tell you about my father. These damned midwives here—–”

“By God, that’s right!” Cap Huff bawled, surprisingly. “That’s what they are! Half of ’em don’t care whether we win or not, as long as they can go on making a dollar! That’s all they think of! Money!”

“Cap,” Nason said, “I’ll thank you to put a curb on your tongue. Those from this town that went up Dead River and down the Chaudière with us weren’t midwives, and there’s plenty more like ’em. Just bear that in mind.”

“I think your friend’s right,” I told Nason. “Theodore Lyman’s been charging my father three dollars specie for a bushel of corn. Why suspect my father of being a public enemy when there’s bastards like Theodore Lyman running loose?”

Nason stared at the ceiling. “He’s a Patriot. He’s planted a row of elms to celebrate the Battle of Bunker Hill.”

“He’s a hell of a Patriot!” I said.

Cap Huff hitched his chair forward, and his voice was hoarsely eager. “Three dollars? He charges three dollars for a bushel of corn? Whereabouts does he live?”

Nason eyed him suspiciously, but spoke to me. “I heard about your father. It was too bad, but it appears to me it was his own fault. If he hadn’t thought the war was going to be over soon, or if you hadn’t thought so, you’d have come home before this, wouldn’t you? And if he thought the war was going to be over soon, he didn’t think it was because we were going to win it, did he?”

“Well—–” I said, and stopped. Nason had it right, and there was nothing I could say.

“Such opinions don’t bother me,” Nason said. “I wouldn’t think we could ever whip the English, either, if I didn’t know they’d blunder into trouble sooner or later. But people in Arundel don’t look at it like that.”

“Not anywhere they don’t,” Cap Huff growled.