Robert Decker, fidgeting with his round hat that he held in front of him with both hands, nodded cheerfully at Starbuck. “Right pleased to make your acquaintance, mister.”

“Look up, Sally!” Truslow growled.

“I ain’t sure I want to be married.” She whined the protest.

“You’ll do as you’re told to do,” her father growled.

“I want to be church married!” the girl insisted. “Like Laura Taylor was, by a proper preacherman!” Starbuck hardly heard what she said, or even cared what she said, because instead he was gazing at Sally Truslow and wondering why God ordained these mysteries. Why was some country girl, whelped off an adulteress to a hard-bitten man, born to make the very sun seem dim? For Sally Truslow was beautiful. Her eyes were blue as the sky over the Nantucket sea, her face sweet as honey, her lips as full and inviting as a man’s dreams could want. Her hair was a dark brown, streaked with lighter veins and rich in the lantern’s light. “A marriage should be proper,” she complained, “not like jumping over a broomstick.” Leaping a broomstick was the deep country way of wedlock, or the slave’s way of signifying a marriage.

“You planning on raising the child on your own, Sally?” Truslow demanded, “without marrying?”

“You can’t do that, Sally,” Robert Decker said with a pathetic anxiety. “You need a man to work for you, to look after you.”

“Maybe there won’t be any child,” she said petulantly.

Truslow’s hand moved like lightning, slashing hard and open across his daughter’s cheek. The sound of the blow was like a whip cracking. “You kill that baby,” he threatened, “and I’ll take a leather to your skin that will leave your bones like bed slats. You hear me?”

“I won’t do nothing.” She was crying, cringing from the vicious blow. Her face had reddened from the slap, but there was still a cunning belligerence in her eyes.

“You know what I do to a cow that won’t carry its young?” Truslow shouted at her. “I slaughter ’em. You think anyone would care if I put another aborting bitch under the dirt?”

“I ain’t going to do nothing! I told you! I’ll be a good girl!”

“She will, Mister Truslow,” Robert Decker said. “She won’t do anything.”

Roper, impassive, stood behind the couple as Truslow stared hard into Robert Decker’s eyes. “Why do you want to marry her, Robert?”

“I’m real fond of her, Mister Truslow.” He was embarrassed to make the admission, but grinned and looked sideways at Sally. “And it’s my baby. I just know how it is.”