Dick shivered and turned up the collar of his homespun jacket. “Maybe it has,” he said, “but it’s cold enough tonight[5] to freeze your gizzard. Hope there won’t be a frost, with the apple trees already budded and most o’ the fields plowed. But what’s that got to do with Sally Rose? Her father keeps a tavern in Charlestown, shops and houses all round, and the seasons don’t matter. Spring don’t mean nothing there.”

A group of sailors swaggered by, jesting and laughing, on their way to the Wolfe Tavern after grog. The spring wind brought a salt smell up from the river, a fish smell, and the clean scent of pine logs from the raft in the cove. One lone candle burned in the window of a counting house nearby and showed them a figure hunched over a tall desk and open ledger. Dick pointed suddenly toward it.

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