“You had more sense, you mean.” John fetched their coats and cloaks from the pegs beside the door—his own still cold to the touch—while Abigail climbed to the little room Pattie shared with the younger boys and now with Gomer Faulk. She gently woke Pattie, and bid her watch until they returned. Only then, wreathed in scarves and cloaks and hoods and hats, with a lantern bobbing ineffectually from John’s hand, did they step out into the windy night.

“Is Coldstone right?” asked Abigail softly after a time. “Have we become like the hanging judges years ago? Like medieval Inquisitors, who would kill a man to save his soul? Abrogating to ourselves the right to do so, because we felt it was right?”

“The only ones who do that,” replied John after thought, “are those who see the world as they did, with only a single answer, not only to that problem, but to all problems. And the single-minded certainly do not number Sam among their ranks, you know. Nor will he condone murder, just because a man has served the liberties of his country.”

“No,” said Abigail. “No, I know that. Orion—no wonder he didn’t harm Rebecca! And no wonder she went into hiding—”

“If it was Hazlitt who killed Mrs. Pentyre.” John held aloft the lantern as they entered the square before the State House and the Customs house, where the Massacre had taken place. Every shutter in town was barred, and at this hour, most of the windows behind them were dark. The night watchman’s cries drifted to them from another street, barely to be heard beneath the steady tolling of the bells. The wind made the feeble light sway even in John’s hand, and the waning moon, breaking through the clouds, showed Abigail movement stirring in the alleyways. A chip of light flared, where someone closed a slide over a lantern. “ ’Tis all right,” he said softly, when she caught at his sleeve. “Sam’s boys, most like.”

“And was it Sam’s boys,” she asked, vexed, “who’ve followed me, when I’ve been abroad at night?”

“Damn his impertinence,” growled John. “But likely, yes. I’ll have a word to say to him.” They walked on in silence.

“When you say,” said Abigail after a moment, “if it was Orion who killed Perdita Pentyre—You still think there were two criminals, and two crimes?”

“I don’t doubt he committed the others, and that it’s he who has been following that poor slave-girl and sending her poems. But killing Mrs. Pentyre—” He shook his head. “To say nothing of throwing the blame off onto me. There are men whose loyalty I’ve doubted, Abigail, men I think Sam needs to be more careful in his dealings with . . . but not Hazlitt. For God’s sake, why commit the crime in the house of the woman he loves? And why steal her list of contacts?”