PROLOGUE

November 27-December 2, 1896

1. The Empty House Thanksgiving 1896

It had snowed for an hour or so that morning, and the large, wet flakes still coated the windward side of trees, lined the bare branches of oak and maple, and formed a speckled fleece over the evergreens that guarded the carriage drive to the Linnett house.

On the way home from Fryeburg, Daniel Plainway pulled the horse and trap up before the stone columns at the end of the drive. He and his sister had been celebrating Thanksgiving with friends, and the snow had actually made it safe to leave later than they had planned, as the road glowed in the dusk, and the tracks of other wheels and horses described the way in dark lines and pockmarks before them.

Martha Bailey complained just a bit (in a wordless groan) when her brother stopped before the Linnett property. They had just crossed the town line into Hiram, and she looked forward to a fire in her own hearth; but to tell the truth, she was snugly wrapped in several throws, and the soapstones, warmed in their host’s kitchen oven, still radiated comfortingly beneath the quilts at their feet.

“Do you mind if l take a turn up?” asked Daniel. The expression on his face was almost childlike, though not untouched by a self-realizing humor.

“No,” she said. “You’ve been thinking about it since we came the other way this morning.”

His chuckle was almost unheard as he shook the reins and the brown mare turned her head between the tilting columns.

The house itself was not visible from the road, and the ancient pines lining the drive hid the gray sky and darkened the atmosphere beneath so that one trusted to the instincts of the horse. There were several turns in the way, and one dip over a tiny running brook before they came to the first row of hedges and the manse itself rising out of the knoll ahead of them, amorphous in the shadows. Not half a mile away was Clemons Pond, glazed with ice, a dark presence in the fields beyond and below.

A they neared the house, a small breeze stirred the hedges.

“Oh, hurry,” said Martha. “This place gives me the chills.”

He passed her the reins, untangled himself from the throws, and climbed down. The wet snow gathered on his boots and crunched in the stiffened, uncut grass. Martha could see footprints appearing behind the man more easily than she could see the man himself, giving her the shuddery impression of an invisible being approaching the house.

The steps to the porch complained of Daniel’s progress; the key sounded dully as he turned it. The air within, when he opened the door, was colder than the November evening. He had known the people here, had handled many small legal businesses for the Linnetts in his capacity as a lawyer, but had spent most of his time among these walls as a guest and a friend.

Daniel stopped in the hall and peered into the gloom of the parlor, remembering the lights and the voices. Nell often played the piano in the evening when they gathered here, and everyone but Linnett himself sang, he being too concerned for his local fame as an old grouch. It had been an undeserved reputation for the most part, until the last year or so, and even then his great rage was the product of a broken heart.

Daniel Plainway was not sure that he believed in ghosts, but he didn’t think he would be frightened if he met one here. There’s more to be feared from the living than the dead, his parents had told him more than once. He looked up the dusty stairway and thought of Nell descending there: a child, a young woman. She had been dear to Daniel’s heart, like a lovely cousin who brings the holiday with her.

The holidays he remembered best of all: the grand Thanksgiving feasts, the Christmas candles throughout the house, filling the rooms with light on the eve before like the very grotto at Bethlehem. Old Ian Linnett never tired of his annual Yuletide jest: On the night of the winter solstice (Doubter’s Day, he called it) he would arrive with a tiny spruce-barely three feet high—and teased everybody by announcing that this was the tree; as soon as he had cajoled the laughing and complaining crowd to decorate the whimsical thing, the real tree would make its entrance upon the backs of sturdy men, and Linnett was never satisfied unless it scraped the ceiling in the front hall.

Daniel craned his head back to look at the ceiling where daylight might have revealed the scars left by the topmost branches of long-forgotten trees.

Standing in the door to the front room, across from the parlor, he did not need a light to discern the shapes of furniture covered in sheets and throws or to remember that Nell’s portrait was missing from its place above the hearth. Other things were missing from the house these past three years. He was pretty sure he knew who had taken them. “If I had just seen it all coming,” he said aloud, and he shivered to think that perhaps his voice was unwelcome there.

Then he heard it again, a soft sound like a young woman’s voice, but as from some irrevocable distance, and almost the notes of a simple melody; no doubt the wind was in a chimney or playing against a cracked eave.

Daniel closed the front door and locked it, feeling a small regret for having come here again. He stood on the porch and thought, It’s almost as if I still believe they’ll all be here. After the gloom of the house the strange patterns of snow on the lawn seemed to give off a light of their own. He could see Martha, waiting patiently in the carriage. It was important that he not appear melancholy when he returned, which meant just a moment more to regain his bearings.

He stepped around the corner of the house and looked over the pond. Everything seemed frozen, pitched in a single moment of discovery, and the sensation was so strong within him that he was startled to see the footprints leading from the back of the house.

The kids have been up here again, he thought as he walked the side lawn. Well, as long as they don’t harm anything.

But there was something about the footprints that did not suggest a youngster had made them. There was only the one set, for one thing, closely spaced and weaving slightly, and they came from the house, and stopped at the edge of the pond. Daniel had thought that he would be fearless in the face of a phantom, but the prints touched him with an apprehension that rose to a vague dread as he followed the tracks to a place overlooking the water. The impress of a body marked the snow.

Old man Linnett had come from the back of the house with that same halting, weaving gait. He had collapsed and died in this place more than three years ago; Daniel could almost vouch for the exact spot.

“Is there anything the matter?” asked Martha when he returned to the carriage.

How could she know in this dark? he wondered. “I only wish they were still here,” he said.

“I wish you wouldn’t come.”

“It’s all right,” he said, patting her knee through the throws wrapped about her. He covered himself up as well as he could and shook the reins, hoping that he didn’t appear to be in a hurry. “Something hot when we get home,” he suggested.

She looked at him in the dark but could see nothing of his expression.

The horse, surefooted and undaunted by the prospect of ghosts, pulled them past the hedges and through the guardian pines to the road home.

2. A Voice Before Dawn November 28, 1896

Lydia O’Hearn was not too proud to half dress herself beneath the covers, a practice she had observed, on cold mornings, since her husband first brought her to his farm in Veazie. Sean O’Hearn used to laugh and make her laugh whenever she hauled her things on in bed, sometimes with the blankets over her head. These days, without her husband to help warm the sheets (a warming pan was not the same thing by any stretch), there was all the more reason to snatch her clothes and scramble into them beneath the covers on a morning like this. It was dark, with the curtains closed against the chill, but when she did climb out of bed, she could see her breath in the room.

She hadn’t been too avid about farm life, or country life for that matter, when she arrived with Sean thirty years ago; she hadn’t been too avid about the life when he died twenty-two years later, but she stayed, and she ran things with the help of her daughter, Emmy, and son-in-law, Ephias Ostertag, and somehow had developed some fierce feelings for it all. Her other children-those who survived the rigors of life to become adults—had separated like geese that fold away in flight to light upon their own fields or ponds. One of these, her son Wyckford, had returned for a time, and she was glad to know, rising that morning, that he was there to help fill the house again.

Once dressed and on the landing above the front hall stairs, she looked out the octagonal window that Sean had put in for her as a birthday present the year before he died. It faced east and was often her first view of the day. a hint of dawn shone through the single frosty pane this morning, with what Lydia considered to be a lack of conviction.

She didn’t know why, but it occurred to her that she should write to Mister Walton. Then she remembered that she had dreamed of this man she had never met and that he had been telling her about Bird’s mother.

Once she had said good morning to the dog, Skinny (a fat black animal of amiable disposition), it did not take her long to shake up the coals in the kitchen stove and get some kindling blazing; with two large sticks of wood and the flues and drafts open she had the firebox roaring and the oven ticking. She put the kettle on and rattled some pans so that everyone would know that Mother was up. Closing the damper, she could feel the heat from the stove almost immediately. There was paper, pen, and ink in the cupboard drawer, and she arranged these on the table, set a chair by the stove, and opened the oven door. The light in the kitchen was yet pretty dim, but she could see to compose a letter.

Dear Mister Walton, she wrote. He was all but a stranger to her, and yet because of everything he had done, particularly what he had done for her son Wyckford and for Bird, she had no difficulty addressing him as Dear Mister Walton with all sincerity. She paused only to wet her pen, before continuing.

You will be pleased, I know, to read that Wyckford has improved greatly since I wrote you last. The cold weather gets into his wound, and he still has difficulty moving his arm more than an inch or two, but he is not in such constant pain and is able to face the day with more hope.

Hope was the important notion here. Wyckford had been shot in the shoulder last October, and the bullet had done untold damage. Lydia’s hope was that her son would be able to work again; she knew that a man unable to wield some sort of tool to make a living was not much valued by society and soon despised by himself. Wyck’s own hopes were more specific, and less likely. For several years, during the warmer months, he had played semiprofessional baseball in Portland, and uppermost in his mind was the fear that he would never again be able to swing a bat.

Lydia heard small footsteps on the stairs, and she put down her pen to wait for the attendant feet to enter the kitchen. After a quiet interval a head of brown hair and a pair of brown eyes, three feet or so from the floor, peered around the jamb. There was the look of humor in those eyes, a little mischief even, which pleased her. “I hope you’re not in your bare feet,” she said, knowing that he was.

The little boy, known to them only as Bird, showed himself and his bare feet. Here was the object of Wyckford’s efforts, and the efforts of Mister Walton and many others, the single small life that had precipitated a kidnapping, mortal chase, and her son’s near loss of life. She had quickly grown to love the child.

“You get over here!” she said in mock anger.

He grinned as he hurried, socks and shoes in his hands, to the table, where she pulled out another chair. He sat down, and she grabbed up his sweet, scarred little feet and began to rub them vigorously.

“Oh, they’re like ice!” she declared, which pleased him more.

This had become a ritual with them, and no one could have guessed who looked forward to it most. When she had chafed his feet warm and dressed them, she got up and washed her hands under the pump—an icy reminder of the day-then pulled down some plates from the cupboard. The kettle was already rumbling. Something occurred to her then, and she said, “I was just about to write Mister Walton about you.” With a thought of what to write next, she sat back down and took up her composition once more.

Bird seems to enjoy the farm more and more, and even Ephias doesn’t mind him following about while he does the morning chores.

It was true. Though Ephias Ostertag was the unfortunate picture of a taciturn Yankee (what Emmy saw in the man, Lydia would never know) and though he seemed as stony as a New England field, he had warmed to Bird considerably and hardly growled when the boy accompanied him as he fed the creatures in the barn and milked the cows. But once Lydia’s son was up and about, moving stiffly after another wakeful night with his splintered shoulder, the little boy was Wyckford’s constant companion.

You will understand, I think, Mister Walton, when I confess to you that it will be difficult to see the boy go, if ever his mother is found.

Emmy appeared in the kitchen, exchanged good mornings with her mother, and informed the boy that her husband had decided to lie abed and let Bird do the chores. Bird looked game. Ephias was not long behind her, though, and he had overheard his wife’s quip. “He’s already milked some and gathered eggs,” said the man, and this intelligence was meants praise, despite the growl in which it was couched. The man sat down and stretched an arm toward the dog. Skinny made a grunting noise while Ephias stroked her head.

Emmy returned from the pantry with a slab of bacon, and soon thick slices of the stuff were snapping in the pan and scenting the air with smoke and spice. Ephias sat at the table and packed his pipe, which would hardly leave his mouth the rest of the day.

“What does an owl in the night mean?” wondered Emmy.

“Probably that there is an owl nearabouts,” returned her mother.

“Granny used to say something about an owl at night,” insisted Emmy.

“A dog howling after dark is not considered fortunate. It’s all superstition.”

“No, I’m sure it was an owl she used to go on about.”

“You would hardly hear one during the day, I think.”

“I’ve heard one three nights in a row,” said Emmy. “He woke me up last night. It’s a strange sound when you’re half asleep.”

“It’s sitting in the apple tree by your window,” said Lydia. She was surprised that an owl would take up residence at this time of year but said nothing.

Wyckford came down the stairs. His tread was the heaviest in the house, the more so since his wounded side had thrown off his gait. He was a man of some altitude, though no longer the splendid “Hybernian Titan” who had spent so much ink in Portland’s sporting press. He looked gaunt and drawn these days and older than his thirty years. There were strands of gray in his bright red hair. He was uncomfortable with his function (or, more aptly put, his lack of function) in the household.

Ephias, who said nothing about Wyckford’s presence, was nearly as discomfited as Wyck. Ephias, it was suspected, had always considered Wyckford to be capricious and unreliable; playing baseball, it would seem, was no way for a man to make a living, even for some fraction of the year. The adventure that had led Wyckford to rescuing Bird and coming to physical grief was only a symptom of an irresponsible nature.

But Wyckford had labored in his time-as a line tender for the railroad and demolishing old buildings to make room for the Portland sugar refinery-and the inactivity of the past month and a half had told upon him as much as the wound that had caused it.

He might have left, if not for Bird. There was a powerful bond between the redheaded giant and the little boy that had been immediate and hard to explain, but if Bird had unintentionally led him to these straits, his presence was helping to lead him out of them.

This morning, however, Wyckford did not linger on Bird, who was sneaking a piece of bacon to Skinny. “Where’s that ax?” Wyck asked his mother, by way of good morning. Someone had given him an ax, hoping that the use of it would duplicate the swing of a bat and bring his arm back to life. Of all the chores that Wyck hated, while growing up on the farm, none had been so onerous to him as chopping and splitting wood. He had spent many an hour contemplating that ax and (not insignificantly) the person (that is, the young woman) who had given it to him.

“It’s in the shed, I think,” said Lydia. She didn’t think Wyckford should be swinging an ax. It had been too soon since he’d been wounded, and she feared he would do more damage to his shoulder, not to mention the danger of chopping off a toe. Nothing else was said. Ephias didn’t look any happier, lighting his pipe. Emmy did not turn around from the stove. But when breakfast was on the table, Wyck put some food into him.

He needed help getting a warm coat on, and Lydia couldn’t see how chucking an a was practical or even very smart. Bird was ready to join him and forgo the morning chores, but Wyckford clearly needed to approach this test alone.

Lydia touched Bird’s shoulder and without a word shook her head.

Wyckford trundled out into the cold morning, looking ungainly but determined. They did not watch him, except for the little boy. a he stood below the kitchen steps, the man’s breath came in great puffs of steam. Beyond him the backyard was bleak with frost.

“Ephias,” said Lydia when the door was closed, but Ephias had his coat on already.

“I can see the woodpile from the barn,” was all Ephias said. He gave a reverse nod to Bird, which was as much invitation as the little fellow had ever gotten from the flinty man. Bird hurried with his coat and hat and followed him out.

Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that Bird could enjoy the morning chores with Ephias, neither of them ever said very much. Ephias’s lack of words, however, was the weight of rocky fields and broken fences; Bird’s silences were bright, the silences of someone who truly listens, like that of a man in a bird-filled wood. Bird followed Ephias, and Skinny waddled after Bird; they were an odd trio.

When they were gone, Lydia said to her daughter, “That was nice of Ephias.”

Emmy was thinking she would cook an apple pie for her husband. “He’ll surprise even himself some days.”

Lydia didn’t like to think of Wyck swinging an a with his broken shoulder but knew somehow that it was necessary. She thought of the person who had given the ax to Wyckford and decided to ask Mister Walton if he had heard from her.

“Who are you writing?” asked Emmy. She had the dishes in the sink and was working the pump handle.

“Mister Walton.” Lydia dipped her pen and considered the letter. The sound of her writing was large in the kitchen.

Emmy poured some hot water from the kettle in after and nearly had the dishes done before she spoke again. “Tell Mister Walton,” she said, “that the boy is spoken for.”

3. How the News Was Read in Gilead December 2, 1896

The Grand Trunk Railway ran through the center of Gilead on its course through the foothills of the White Mountains, and it is there that the train deposited Daniel Plainway on Thursday morning, the second day of December 1896. It had snowed in the night, and a white dust lay over the roofs and porches along Gilead’s Main Street. a sack of mail was deposited in a coach waiting outside the station, and the town postmaster and the porter exchanged greetings and speculations about the weather.

Daniel was the only passenger to get off this morning at Gilead. He carried a small leather case, which contained certain legal papers, a ham sandwich, an apple, and a change of shirt. “Good morning,” he said to the man in the carriage.

“Looking for someone?” asked the postmaster. He wore a dark cap, and his large gray mustaches waggled when he spoke.

Daniel considered the overcast sky as he spoke. “Gerald Pinkney,” he said. Plainway was a pleasant-looking fellow, with wide brown mustaches; he was dressed well, and there was a large gold chain arched across a stomach that was something below portly.

“Gerald will be up to his uncle’s,” said the postmaster. “What a time he’s had!”

“So I understand.”

“Come up with me to the post office, if you can wait, and once I’ve sorted the mail, I’ll take you up. There’ll be a stop or two on the way.”

“Thank you,” said Daniel. “I would like that.”

The use of the carriage seemed a strange formality since the post office was but three or four doors up. Daniel was a little surprised when they stopped, but he got out and gratefully caught the smell of coffee as he stepped inside. Mr. Beals, the postmaster, called to his wife-the post office took up the parlor of their house-and she met Daniel and hurried of to get refreshments.

Several people wandered in to watch the sorting of the mail, and Daniel greeted each of them. He stood in a corner with his coffee, leaving the straight-backed chairs for the elderly folk. There were six or eight of them before long. They were interested in him and curious to hear about the town of Hiram, where he hailed from, some forty miles away as the crow 13 flies. Only the parson among them had ever stopped there, though one old fellow thought he had passed through, years before, on his way to his brother’s. Several of them remarked that Gerald Pinkney had had quite a time, and Daniel said that he had understood this to be the case.

Talk was not much different from what one might expect to hear in the post office back home; Daniel knew the familiar tones, the voices quiet and measured in the converted parlor. The Bealses kept track of the talk while they sorted, a process they lingered over. The day was young, and the mail was a high point for most of these folk; there was no need to rush things.

A good deal had been happening in town. Mr. Garnish had discovered a perfectly good turnip in the garden behind his house that he had previously overlooked. “Frost never got to it,” he explained, several times.

Evidently something like this had happened before; someone said to Mr. Garnish, “You have a rare gift for finding harvest out of season.” Those in the room looked to Daniel, as if for outside comment.

“I’m often amazed at how many people have rare gifts,” he said.

“And do you have a rare gift, Mr. Plainway?” wondered an elderly woman.

“I could whistle before I was three,” he answered, and this seemed to satisfy them; the conversation moved on to other matters.

Mrs. Feeney had lost a button off a coat sleeve, and the cat had knocked it beneath the stove. She was waiting for her granddaughter to come by and fish it out for her. She showed the wanting sleeve to her audience, and talk fell upon her granddaughter, who was well thought of.

“I like a child that smiles,” said Mr. Garnish.

“She’s a nice girl,” admitted Mrs. Feeney, who allowed others to forward most of the praise.

Daniel was not surprised to discover, through further conversation, that Mrs. Feeney’s granddaughter was twenty-two, with a child of her own. He had the pleasant sensation of not having gone anywhere at all, unless it were back to his own youth.

“What’s doing in your neck of the woods?” asked Mr. Trace.

“Neck of the woods!” said Mrs. Feeney, as if she’d never heard such talk, and in front of a stranger! “Edward!”

“Well, sir,” said Daniel easily, “we have a fellow down our way who is looking forward to a grand harvest of Christmas trees.”

There was a “You don’t say!” and at least two “Good heavens!” and other such exclamations.

“Where’ll he sell them?” wondered Mr. Garnish.

“Oh, he’ll head for the coast,” said Daniel, “drop off a few along the way, and do the main part of his business down at Portland. Ten cents a foot, right out of his wagon.”

The old folks were delighted. In their lifetime Christmas had been transformed from a day during which people celebrated by firing off a few guns to a majestic holiday of holly and fir boughs and visits from Santa Claus. Only twenty years before, many churches were still debating the propriety of celebrating what was considered a pagan holiday, but even the parson, sitting with them, smiled to hear of all those Christmas trees.

Mr. Garnish admired (what he considered) the pure Yankee cussedness of it. “Selling little trees!” he said. “They’ll be selling rocks out of their yards next.”

The light outside had increased or changed in some way, so that Daniel could look out the parlor window and see between two houses across the street. a narrowed vista of distant mountains rose above the river valley of the Androscoggin.

“Mrs. Feeney,” said the postmaster. He had a single bit of mail in hand. The elderly woman brightened to see it, and she hurried over. Two or three others among them were blessed with a letter or a package, and soon Mrs. Beals was left in charge of things and Daniel was ushered out into the chill.

“Usually I head east first,”said the postmaster, “but I’ll do things in reverse today and baffle everybody.”

“Gerald’s uncle’s, I take it, is west,” said Daniel.

“It is.” The road rose and fell with the land, and with it the view of the Presidential Range, off in New Hampshire. “It’ll be the sleigh in another week, I warrant,” said Mr. Beals. “Don’t like to let go of the carriage,” the postmaster was saying. “It means winter and sleighing till snow breaks.”

Daniel knew that snow breaking meant the mail was delivered on foot till mud cleared or not at all.

“You’re a lawyer,” said Mr. Beals.

“I am,” said Daniel.

“Thought so.” This was enough for a minute or two. They pulled up before the first house outside the village, and Mr. Beals hopped out with his delivery. Daniel waved to the woman who came to the door, and he could hear the postmaster explaining who he was. “Gerald has had some time!” said the gray fellow when he climbed back in.

“So I understand,” said Daniel again.

The old Pinkney place had been a tavern long before, one of the resting places and watering holes that led travelers into the White Mountains. Since then Gerald’s uncle Pughe had lived there for twenty years by himself, and the place had not been very well tended. It looked abandoned, slouching above the road, its front porch gazing to the west and the blue and white heights. There were two wagons parked in front of the old house, and Daniel stopped for a moment to consider the oddities piled therein.

“Daniel!” came the familiar voice of Gerald Pinkney, and a stocky fellow stomped onto the porch. “What a time I’ve had!”

Daniel smiled. “Have you?” He looked to the postmaster, who had gotten from his carriage and followed him.

Mr. Beals shrugged. “Been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Plainway,” he said then. The postmaster shook Daniel’s hand and politely left them to their business.

“If I could be sure there was a smidgen of truth to what they all say,” said the man on the porch, “I’d take it down stick by stick!” Gerald Pinkney and Daniel Plainway had known each other since their days at Colby, and Daniel had always thought of Gerald as a slightly antagonized bee.

“You won’t sell it in pieces,” said Daniel. He stood and looked up at the old creation.

“That’s just it,” said Gerald. “I believe I do have it sold.” He led them up the steps and into the house, which felt cold and empty. Daniel was reminded of the Linnett estate and not for the first time worried about those strange marks in the snow by the pond. There were three other fellows, young men, with Gerald, who were helping him clean out the place. They stood in the front room, where a stove did its best against the constant opening of the door.

“I’ve taken up floorboards,” Gerald was saying. “I’ve looked between walls. We’ve wandered from room to room, thumping on the walls, and all we found was an old musket in the partition between the kitchen and the pant.”

“Unloaded, I trust,” said Daniel. Then he asked wryly, “No digging in the cellar?”

Gerald was taking it all very seriously, however, and he shook his head. “Couldn’t find any sign of recent digging, but we sunk a hole or two. There’s an old siege well down there, and we sent one of the neighborhood kids down it with a lamp.” Daniel was chuckling now. “Laugh you may!” said Gerald, who was not really angry. “But Uncle Pughe sold his investments in five ships before he chased off here, and as far as I can tell, he didn’t spend much!”

“He might have lost it,” suggested Daniel, who understood the vagaries of the market. “He might have given it away.”

Gerald made a low sound, like a growl.

Daniel looked about the front room. Only the dining room would be larger in an old tavern, but the ceilings were low, and chairs stood in three of the room’s corners, as in older days. There was a bed in the fourth corner, against an outer wall (which seemed chilly), and Daniel walked over to the old headboard and considered the yellowed clippings from newspapers and periodicals that covered the walls above the mattress.

“We opened the mattress, of course,” said Gerald.

Daniel leaned forward, fascinated by the panoply of faces and figures before him. Both walls from corner to nearest window were covered with drawings and etchings of women. There were fashion advertisements and comic panels, portraits of famous ladies and domestic scenes; there were women at their needle and thread, cooking, playing the piano. There was nothing that was not demure and pleasing to the eye-handsome dresses and handsome figures within them, large eyes and Cupid’s bow lips.

“That’s quite a gallery,” said Daniel pleasantly. He could imagine Gerald’s uncle finding comfort in all these fine ladies when he woke each morning.

“Yes,” said Gerald, his mind briefly taken from his hunt. “My wife was a little scandalized. Not that there’s anything in particular; it’s just the sheer weight of it.”

“It’s a great lot of work,” agreed Daniel. He chuckled again, but his eye had been taken by a particular portrait, which seemed itself to be the copy of a framed work of art. There was something in the young woman’s eyes, expressed therein, that harkened to Daniel.

“What I need to know,” Gerald was saying, “is there such a thing as a stipulation in a selling agreement that says if something valuable is found after the transfer of the building, it must be turned over to the previous owner?”

Daniel leaned closer to the wall. The clipping didn’t seem as old, or as yellowed, as some of the others. There were two small lines of print beneath the face of the young woman.

“Of course,” continued Gerald, “that presupposes a degree of honesty on the part of the buyer.”

The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton, read the legend beneath the picture. The woman was beautiful despite what Daniel suspected was an imperfect rendering. He considered the eyes and the almost sad smile.

“Daniel, are you listening to me?”

“I’m sorry, Gerald. I am not.”

“You want to take that wall with you?”

Then Daniel knew. “Gerald,” he said, his head buzzing, “I know this woman!”

Gerald and the young men crowded around to peer at the picture. “This one?”

“Yes. My word, it’s Eleanor Linnett!”

“An old flame, Daniel?” asked Gerald.

“Not at all,” said Daniel Plainway. “Simply a dear friend. She died four or five years ago.”

“I am sorry.”

“But you see,” said Daniel as he reached out to touch the piece of newspaper, “this picture of her-well, the picture that this is copied from disappeared, along with her son.”

“Did he take it with him?” wondered one of the young fellows. They were all ready to be wrapped in Daniel’s sudden mystery.

“Not by himself,” said Daniel, hardly hearing himself. “He was only a year old.” He felt out of breath, his mouth was dry, almost with fright, as if he had seen a ghost.

Gerald saw that his friend had grown pale, and he forgot about business for the moment as he suggested that Daniel sit down.

“We’ve just wondered so about the boy and worried about him,” explained the lawyer. “I knew the family well, and there was a man intended to be the boy’s tutor. I’m not making much sense, I know-” He touched the picture again. “May I take this?”

“Of course,” said Gerald, and Daniel carefully eased the picture from the wall. It had been glued there, but the glue was stiff and came away without damaging the clipping.

“What paper do you suppose this came from?” asked Daniel.

“Who knows?” said Gerald. “There were hundreds and hundreds—stacks of papers-all through the house!”

“I wonder if I could match the type,” said Daniel.

“We threw them all out,” admitted Gerald.

Daniel read the legend beneath the portrait again. The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton. Who was this Mister Walton, and what business had he taking custody of Nell’s picture? Daniel, who liked most people, felt a vague irritation with this Mister Walton. If only the accompanying article had been saved, but the wall boasted of nothing but pictures of handsome females. “Edgecomb,” he said. “That’s near the coast, I think.”

Gerald hoped to bring Daniel’s attention back to the difficulty regarding Uncle Pughe’s missing fortune. “That’s quite something, finding that here. What say we have a bite to eat? We’ve been keeping the kitchen going. Then maybe you can help me decide what to do.”

Nothing but handsome females, Daniel was thinking as he looked from the piece of print in his hand to the place on the wall where he had lifted it. Except for that green tinted picture of Silas W right there. Daniel stepped up to the bed once again and leaned forward to peer at the government engraving peering back from the surrounding femininity. Beside the late statesman were the bold words Treasury of the United States—Fifty Dollars in Gold Coin!

“Gerald,” said Daniel, “have you looked behind these clippings?”

He had begun several letters, though he was not sure to whom he intended to send any of them:t whom it may concern, perhaps. The clock in the hall tolled eleven, but he did not think that he could sleep yet. He had been here most of the evening, arriving after dark from Gilead, and having explained to Martha what had happened, he bolted a quick supper and sequestered himself in his study.

On the desk before him was the newspaper portrait; on the floor beside him lay the Atlas of the Maine Railway System. Finding Edgecomb on a map had been the first order of business, and half a dozen times he had returned to the book to trace the lines of roads and railways, hills and coastline, attempting to descry from those charts the manner in which Eleanor Linnett’s portrait might have found its way to that riverside town and into the hands of the previously unheard-of Mister Walton.

The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, read the legend beneath the picture, but what could that mean?

He thought he heard something in the hall and looked over his shoulder. a brisk wind, coming down from the mountains, rattled at the west end of the house. The hall was dark, and Martha startled him by appearing in the doorway of his study.

“I thought you had gone to bed,” he said.

“I did,” she said, “but you were making so little noise down here I couldn’t get to sleep.”

There was a certain inversion to Martha Bailey’s sense of humor that Daniel welcomed. It meant, he hoped, that she was not entirely unhappy living in her brother’s house. She had married more than ten years ago but had lost her husband to a logging accident within a year of their wedding. She had been with Daniel ever since. There was a picture of Edward Bailey in her room, above the headboard of her bed, like a patron saint.

Daniel himself had always thought marriage a pleasant idea and had even known someone to whom he had contemplated a proposal. He was reticent, however, in such matters, and life was permitted to interrupt his intentions. She had married the year after Martha and moved away.

Their own family-parents, two brothers, and a sister-had all gone before them, and it was not strange that Daniel had allowed himself to become an adopted uncle at the Linnett house.

“I think I will go to Edgecomb,” said Daniel to the curtained window before his desk.

“You said yourself that a telegram would serve as well,” said Martha.

“I did, didn’t I.”

“I wasn’t sure at the time whom you were trying to convince.”

Daniel picked up another item on his desk, the fifty-dollar bill that Gerald Pinkney had pressed on him. He had been embarrassed to accept such a gift, atop his fee, but Gerald was so delighted with Daniel for discovering (however accidentally) Uncle Pughe’s stash, papering the parlor walls beneath the mass of feminine portraits and newspaper clippings, that he would not have taken no for an answer. Gerald was not a greedy man and had made similar gifts to the young fellows who had helped him in his search. “If you thought I was crazy all this time,” Gerald had said, “you never let on.”

“Maybe I’ll use this to travel with,” said Daniel to his sister. The bill still had traces of wallpaper paste on one side and felt stiff and unreal when he waved it. The truth was that he had already earmarked the bill for Christmas.

“You should keep it,” said Martha, “and take yourself fishing with it next spring.” She made her way across the floor and stood by his desk, looking down at the picture of Eleanor Linnett. The engraving failed to do justice to either the woman or the original portrait, but it harkened enough after both to revive memories, which were not all sad. “She was lovely, wasn’t she,” said Martha.

“Yes,” replied the brother. “And never knew it-or, at least, never thought about it.”

Daniel was both wise and mild, but Martha knew there was still much of the child about him, and she worried accordingly. She half suspected that her brother, in his own unsuspecting way, had been in love with Nell Linnett, and she would not have blamed him. But if Daniel displayed reticence to the world in such matters, it was not a signal of any lack of self-awareness; he had loved Eleanor Linnett as a friend, or a cousin, or as another sister perhaps. He had looked forward to her happiness with some young fellow and to watching her children grow.

Though the happiness with some young fellow had been skipped over somehow, there was (or had been) a child. This person-a boy, who could be no more than four years old now-was the true reason for Daniel’s troubled heart. He looked at the picture again and read the words beneath it. The portrait discovered beneath Fort Edgecomb, now in the custody of Mister Walton.

What could it mean? And if the portrait was in the custody of this Mis-. ter Walton, where was the child? Where was little Bertram Linnett?

“How will I know if he’s taken care of?” she had asked. “You’ll let me know,” she had said. a always the memory seemed to obstruct Daniel’s ability to breathe.

“Mr. Lyatt is coming tomorrow,” said his sister.

Daniel let out a sigh as he remembered this long-standing appointment. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll leave Friday morning, then.” He hardly thought he would sleep between now and then, but once he had come to this decision, a yawn rose up and overtook him. “I could be sending telegrams and letters back and forth for days with who knows who,” he continued when it had passed, “and meanwhile, where is the boy?” Nell’s boy must be a sweet little fellow, he was thinking.

Martha surmised the boy was beyond anybody’s reach by now but said nothing. Daniel would have to find the truth or discover more questions on his own, and it was not for her to sow his heart with darker fears. She kissed him on the top of his head and said good-night.

Daniel put away his pen. He folded the half-finished letters and tucked them into the wastebasket beneath his desk. He looked again at the maps, figuring his itinerary. Then he sat some more, listening to the wind and considering the past and the possibilities of the future. The clock was striking two when he came awake with a start in his chair. He turned out the light and went upstairs to bed.