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milady.”
    “I’ll not be threatened by your likes,” she said. A queerness there was in her voice, even when she was common-spoken and plain. Twas as if she only imitated the normalcy of our speech. I cannot explain the thing, but there it was: A strangeness to fit the night. “I’ll not be threatened,” she rambled on, “or I’ll say the words none can call back upon ye, I will.”
    “Threatened you will not be. Nor do I wish to see you come to harm. But you will tell me who is in that grave.”
    “My husband it is. My Danny.”
    “You know that is not true.”
    “Tis my husband’s grave, an’t it?”
    “That is not the same thing. Who is the dead girl?”
    She did not flinch at the question, and so I knew that she knew at least some part of it. She merely said, “What girl, then?”
    “The girl who was murdered elsewhere, dressed in another’s rags, then put in a coffin and buried as your husband.”
    “Sure, you’re talking mad enough for the friar’s asylum.” She threw back her shawl, then tossed her midnight hair.
    “Well,” I told her, “better an asylum than a prison. Or the gallows. Who is the girl? Who killed her?”
    The moon come back to light her eyes, and she did a thing that no man could expect. She took up my hand, the right one. Lifting it to her mouth, she smiled, then began to lick my fingers. With all the death on them.
    I froze. And she grinned at me. Her tongue swept over her lips.
    “I know her now, the dirty slut,” she said. “You’ve had your fingers in her.”
    Then she put my fingers in her mouth.
    I lurched away from her. Almost stumbling over a fallen branch. I hid my hand behind my back, all reflexes and confusion. As if she might come after me and seize my hand again.
    I felt an urge to slap her. And to vomit.
    “The little man’s afraid,” she laughed. Fair cackling, a sound that pierced. “The little man’s afraid . . .”
    Twas then she began to scream. I did not expect that, either. She should have screamed long before, if she had a mind to do so. Why had she waited for me to find her? Why did she bring suspicion on herself? Then, only when compromised, cry for her Irish brethren?
    I could not seek answers that evening, for she howled off like a banshee, racing for the mine patch down below. Screaming to wake the next county.
    There are times when a man must take a stand. But that night was not one of them. With the grave but a portion filled in, I gathered up my Dutchmen and their tools, snuffed out the lantern, and trotted the lads away from the clustered houses. I kept them under strict command, for I knew they wished to run faster than I could follow. But I did not want one to lose his way and stray into the colliery patch. Bad enough would come, I knew, when the Irish learned of our business. And I did not wish to see one of my poor lads mobbed to death. Or thrown into a mineshaft and left to die broken-boned. They hadalready murdered a Union general. I did not think they would pause over killing a private. Or a major.
    I will not pretend our retreat was made in good order. We fled. And a good thing it was that my leg had shown improvement. For we had not made a quarter mile’s progress before I heard a medley of Irish curses and saw the bobbing of miner’s lamps in the valley.
    We were fortunate. The Irish were all too poor to feed them a dog.

TWO

    “ON WHOSE AUTHORITY DID YOU DIG UP THAT GRAVE?” Young Mr. Gowen was angry. He had risen from his desk in a flush of temper, near hot enough to melt the wax on his mustache ends. Had I believed him a foolish man, I would have paid attention to his fists.
    “Damn me, Jones,” he continued, with unnecessary profanity, “we’ve only just gotten the Irish quieted down. And here you go disturbing their dead in the middle of the night. Do you want another riot, man? Or worse? You know what happened in Tremont with that train.” He drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket, but did not open its lid or