“Exactly so, Mrs. Hazlitt.” Abigail stepped neatly to Mrs. Hazlitt’s other side, and took her hand. “Yet, m’am, I have wanted for a long time to ask you, how do you reconcile what the Lord said to Ezekiel, about my comeliness that I had put upon you . . . ?” Though Abigail loved few things more than she loved a good discussion of well-reasoned theology, she knew she wasn’t going to get one from Mrs. Hazlitt. She hoped, as the widow poured an excited torrent of Scripture, personal visions, and the revelations of her own favorite pastors over her, that Sam would conclude his questioning of Orion promptly and come to her rescue.

And the part of her mind that wasn’t silently protesting the view of God the Eternal Tally-Keeper—silently, because Mrs. Hazlitt never permitted anyone to interrupt the flow of her revelations and opinion—raised a disbelieving eyebrow and asked, Sam?

“The Devil speaks through the mouths of sinners,” proclaimed Mrs. Hazlitt, pacing back and forth before the unswept, ash-piled hearth. “The Devil sends them into the world to tempt and try us, and to argue us out of our faith!” Glancing around her at the uncleared table, the market basket still sitting empty on the sideboard, the empty woodbox, Abigail wondered if the latest in the line of “girls” hired to help the household had quit—or been released—or was simply more slack than most about her duties. Prior to his mother’s arrival to share his house, Abigail knew that Orion Hazlitt had managed, on the slender proceeds of his printing and stationery shop, to pay an elderly housekeeper . . . an arrangement which had concluded within three days of Mrs. Hazlitt’s appearance on the doorstep.

“The Devil sends tempters to call my poor son away from me, to take him from my side.” The lovely widow stopped directly before Abigail, stared at her with tears suddenly brimming in her emerald eyes. “He wouldn’t forsake me of his own volition, and I tremble for him, tremble at his sin! Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land that God hath given thee!”

“Of course, m’am.” It was no wonder, Abigail reflected, that for two years now the printing business had been in slow decline, and the shop, with its few books and boxes of stationery, wore a dusty and neglected look. Too many days Abigail had walked down Hanover Street and seen the shutters up while Orion, with superhuman patience, reasoned with this woman, or cleaned up the messy destruction that resulted from her moments of fury.