“Very good,” approved Abigail, as Thaxter helped the fallen man to sit. “He hasn’t broken his neck.” She replaced the pin in her box. “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

He was already scanning the woods around them.

“Gang of hooligans, sir,” reported Muldoon. “They made off—”

“Can you stand, sir?” Thaxter had risen to his feet and had his pistol at the ready again, though, Abigail reflected, his powder was almost certainly damp as well. She was astonished the attackers had managed to get off a shot. He held down his left arm for the Lieutenant to take hold of, and Coldstone rose, a little shakily, to his feet, and immediately staggered.

“Where’s my horse?” he asked. “She came down on my ankle, it feels like—”

“She was well enough to leave the woods at a gallop,” Abigail said. “Sergeant—?”

Muldoon shook his head, and waved vaguely in the direction his own mount had gone.

“The innkeeper at the Fish-Tail will advertise a reward,” said Abigail. “I think the sooner you two are back in Boston, the better off you’ll be. The ferry’s stopped running by now—” She glanced worriedly at the gray overcast above the leafless trees.

Thaxter made a noise of disgust as he brought his horse around for Coldstone to mount. “The cook at the Fish-Tail’s got to have done for twenty men at least—”

“The ferry will oblige us, in the King’s name.” Coldstone’s face turned wax white when Muldoon boosted him into the saddle, but his expression of arctic calm did not alter. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He took the wig that Muldoon picked up for him, but didn’t put it on; it was covered with mud and leaves. So was his hat, but he did don that. It fit ill, without the wig. “I trust my sergeant and I will be able to command a bed among the men at the battery, if the weather worsens before we can cross back to the Castle. I am much obliged to you, Mrs. Adams. I guessed you to be formidable, but did not realize you were so fearsome in combat.”

Boosted up by her clerk, Abigail settled herself in her saddle. “It does not do to underestimate Americans, Lieutenant. I’m surprised,” she added, as they reined back toward the road, and the dim yellow lights of Winnisimmet beginning to speck the darkness, “that they chose to attack you in daylight, so close to the town. You haven’t been picking out quarrels with the local worthies, I hope?”

“If by ‘picking out quarrels,’ you mean, investigating rumors of treason and sedition,” replied Coldstone, “I fear that I have, m’am. As you should well know. And, I am not surprised in the least, that such men would lie in wait for an officer of the King.”

“He’s right, m’am,” added Sergeant Muldoon diffidently. “Town’s like a nest of hornets, it is.”