Rebecca is out there somewhere. A prisoner in one of those attics, with the water rising. She will drown, before we find her. Abigail leaned from the window, feeling the slick wet coldness of the windowsill, the sting of the wind on her face. “Where are you?” she screamed, but her throat would produce no sound. The gale whipped her hair around her face, a vast sable cloud. From the window the whole of the world seemed to be a waste of water, a thousand dark roofs and blind black windows. Rebecca could be trapped behind any one. The bells tolled like thunder, and lightning from the coming storm flickered over the face of the deep.

“Don’t give up!” Still no sound. She gasped, trying to force the air from her throat. “We’re coming!” And woke upon a gasp, as John touched her shoulder.

“Nab,” he whispered, and she clung to him in the darkness that seemed so black after the luminous cat-sight of dreaming. “Beloved—”

At the sound of the church bells she shivered violently. “Who is ringing the bells?” He drew back a little in surprise at the mundane question, and she heard the muffled snort of his chuckle.

“Sam’s got men at it, turn and turn about,” he said. “All along the waterfront, too, ready in case the Cumberland tries to put in or Leslie brings his men over. Is that what you were dreaming of, dear friend? The bells? Do they trouble you?”

She shook her head. “Just a dream. They’ll trouble the British a good deal more.” It was good to be able to seek refuge in his arms.

There was no great difficulty in ascertaining whether Abednego Sellars had passed the previous Thursday evening where others could see him, particularly not with Boston in a ferment and half the merchants in the town absent from their shops. Abigail abstracted a book of sermons from the top shelf of John’s library, wrapped it in rough paper and string, and waited until John left for Old South Church, where the meeting was that day. Though not one of the inner circle of the Sons of Liberty, he was always gone during these gray, louring mornings, at the hour when the countrymen who crowded the streets seemed to vanish as if by magic. Walking from Queen Street down to Milk Street, where Sellars had his chandlery shop, Abigail passed Old South, and saw the backs of men clustered in its doorway, and heard the muffled outcry of voices within. Sam? she wondered. He could always get a crowd going . . .

Again the thought crossed her mind of the Reverend Bargest out in Gilead, rousing his congregation to just such an outcry: Behold them! Aggh, there she is! Do you not see her? The serpent, with its glaring eyes—Lo, can you not see where the Nightmare comes? There! There! And everyone in the little congregation wailed, We see her, we see . . .