When it resumed, she sighed. “No sense adding to the poor man’s trouble by leaving bait out for rats.” She settled the basket more firmly on her arm. “But, I couldn’t sleep tonight, without having tried.”

Wind screamed along Hanover Street as they made their way back, cutting through Abigail’s cloak and jacket as if she wore gauze and lace. This corner of Boston, along the footslopes of Beacon Hill, was but thinly built-upon yet, and the neighborhood along Hanover Street lacked the crowded liveliness of the North End. With all shutters closed, and the moon hidden in cloud-wrack, the darkness was abyssal, swallowing the wan flicker of Thaxter’s lantern and causing Abigail to wonder what people did, who were abroad in such darkness who didn’t know the way. Even thieves, she reflected, would have a hard time—

She stopped, and turned to look back.

“What is it, m’am?”

What had it been? She stood for a moment, wondering if she should say anything . . . “I thought I saw a light behind us,” she said.

“There’s naught now.” Thaxter raised his lantern—not that the single candle inside could have put out enough light to show up a regiment of dragoons at ten feet. The two of them might have been sewn up in a sack, for all either could see.

With the wind, the whole of the night seemed to be in motion: creakings from shop-signs, the constant whispered rattle of shutters in the darkness.

“Could have been a cat,” the young man opined.

It could have.

“Or there’s no reason that we’re the only ones abroad tonight.”

None.

It was only a few hundred feet, to the narrow passway that led back into the Adams yard and the warmth of the kitchen door. Abigail looked back over her shoulder half a dozen times, but never saw a thing in the darkness.

When John came home and heard what Sergeant Muldoon had said about the threat made in the name of Novanglus, his face took on that congealed, heavy look of rage that Abigail knew so well—then he shook his head, and let it go. “I must say I’m a little insulted, that the British believe I’d be such a booby as to announce murderous intentions under the name that pretty much everyone in New England knows is mine.” He pulled off his wig, folded it carefully, and laid it on the corner of the table, then vigorously scratched his scalp. A small pot of cider—and two larger ones of hot water—steamed gently over the fire, and Abigail went to fetch cold chicken and a couple of slices of corn-pudding for him from the crocks where tomorrow’s cold Sabbath dinner waited, cooked and ready.