fifty years to close accounts and collect their fee.”

By now the grass growing along the sides of the road and in the median between the ruts had grown long enough to brush against their calves, while the ruts themselves faded. They had walked half a mile, the road curving gently to their left, before entering a shallow wood that appeared on the right hand. Lyman had a definite impression this land had been cleared at one time—they passed between the bookends of a low tumbledown wall—before springing up again, by slow saplings and creepers, to reconquer its stolen territory. In the shade of the trees the road became sandy and the grass subsided. Then the ground inclined slightly and at the top squatted a house of fieldstone blocks chinked with sand daub. It was a saltbox, its wooden roof sloping from a height of two stories at its centerline to one story in the back. Much of the roof was buried beneath leaves and sticks and branches, and part of it had cratered into the kitchen.

“Here we are,” he said. “Doesn't look like someone's been in the house since I last visited.”

To this Grosvenor added little, perhaps worried Lyman might reject the project, and they ducked their heads under the lintel of the heavy door frame to tour inside; the thick door, though sticky, was unlocked. The ceilings were higher than Lyman had imagined—“Apparently the elder Garrick was quite tall and thin,” Grosvenor said—and the stone kept the air damp but cool. It would be refreshing to live here in the summer months, Lyman reasoned, after one had lit a fire to dry the place. The fireplaces were massive, of course. But it would also be freezing in the winter—which was all the more reason for him to expedite repairs and decamp for the main house. They walked from room to room. Berms of mortar, dissolved into dust, lay at the base of every wall, creating gaps between the stones. The windows were narrow but the glass, with two exceptions, was intact; and the doors, though most without hinges and latches, stood propped beside their frames, waiting to be rehung. Leaves and twigs and nests of a menagerie’s worth of varmints lay in the corners or were stuffed among the rafters, though prodding with toe or stick hinted that none seemed to be presently inhabited.

“Mr. Grosvenor,” said Lyman, “you have greatly exaggerated the condition of this house.”

Grosvenor looked at him with some anxiety.

“I don’t see why I can’t take occupancy immediately. Some sweeping, reglazing of the panes, reattachment of hardware—the work of a few days. Repointing the walls and the roof will take longer, and a new sanitation pit must be dug, and to prevent further stavings, many of the trees and saplings around the house should be cut down. But these are straightforward tasks. I believe the young men could settle here before the last red leaf has fallen.”

Grosvenor beamed. “I knew from your letters you were the right man for the job, Mr. Lyman.” He shook Lyman’s hand heartily and Lyman, for the first time since arrival, carefully set down the bag in his left hand and sealed their bargain by clasping his palm over their mutual grip.

Later Grosvenor arranged for some men to drive a cart full of supplies down to the house: lamps and lanterns and oil, a broom, a hammer and some hooks, a few dishes and cups and a pot and a pair of fire dogs, firewood, a water jug and a bucket and rope for the well, an old bedstead they wrestled out of the attic of the so-called Consulate, a mattress stuffed with fresh straw, a blanket, a wobbly dresser, and a lunch of cold ham and onions on bread. Lyman spent the rest of the day cleaning and sorting, and he claimed a bedroom for his own based on the size of the hearth rather the room itself. The fire, once lit, did as predicted and chased away the damp. In the late afternoon an exhausted Lyman paused his chores to sit on the edge of the bed, studying the flames; soon he lay back, his eyelids heavy, and dropped his chin to his chest.

He awoke engulfed in darkness. Stumbling through his mnemonic geography he managed to raise the fire and find and light a lamp. Outside lay impenetrable black and chirping frogs and crickets; Lyman had no conception of the hour but judged he had missed supper at the main house. Resolution would have to abide his stomach until daybreak. He poured himself some water from the jug and washed his face and hands and unpacked his clothes into the dresser. The other bag he stuffed under the bed. With log and poker Lyman built up the fire as high as it would safely go and sat staring at it, and gradually a snowfall of calm gathered in his hair and upon his shoulders, an accumulation of peace he hadn’t known for weeks. Finally he was secure: ensphered in a globe of night on the edges of civilization, as isolated as a Sandwich Island maroon, but not so alone as to be lonely. The purest bred hound, raised on a diet of nothing except dirty stockings and pinpricks of blood on grass, could not track his footsteps from New York to the little stone ruin perched on the periphery of Connecticut wilderness. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and dozed again.

The second time he woke to the sound of a violin. He couldn’t have been long asleep. the fire burned brightly; but the night beyond the house had gone silent, with only the scraping of the bow across strings. Lyman lay there a long time, icy needles stabbing him, wondering where the music originated. There was no wind to carry it from the house or some other building. Maybe someone fiddled while walking along the road? An approaching visitor. Then the playing, mournful at first, kicked up to a

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