I awoke after eleven hours of Lethe's deepest potions, feeling at rest, my strength renewed. But only moments after my dreams faded, and I had made the long slow climb back up to spring sunlight rolling across the foot of my bed like an invitation to go to sea, my mind began again to submerge between the wonders and terrors of the day before, which came back to me as rapidly as lost friends appear at the door of a suddenly prosperous gambler.

My head was haunted with images of the desperate fury in the face of Celia's daughter, of the earnest desperation in the look of Katherine McInnis when she thought I could give her some clue as to Emmet's whereabouts, the desolate whiteness of Lefrenier Chouvin's dead face, his soul already, I am sure, writhing in judgment at the edge of the Hereafter as I dragged his useless corpse into the underbrush.

I wrestled with this state for three days, during which I strove to keep my life appearing normal and routine, working steadily at my small handful of cases from the rapidly burgeoning commercial interests of Saint Louis. There were few in town who could be trusted at law, and I made it a serious policy to be one of them, always seeking to deal with my clients with complete integrity of character and honesty of word and deed, honoring their confidences and their visions for the future. As a result I was becoming known amongst the large merchants in town who owned the mills, the steamboats and their cargos, and, yes, the slaves who made it possible. Although I had to steel myself to rationalize their situation, I knew that changing the condition of their lives could only be done individually until by God's grace we could grow up as a people, both economically and spiritually,, and learn to be fully human. But until I could help that happen, I bit my lip. At some level, perhaps, I had interceded to help Sophie and her mother to assuage my guilt in this respect. But who knows.

For three days I staggered through my ordinary work, my mind haunted by Katherine's McInnis' smile and her blue eyes, and my heart grieved by the death of the men I had shot, albeit in self-defense.

I thought this would probably be all the burden I would carry for the day's misdaventures, so I was unprepared for a visit that Friday evening at my office from Joseph Conway. I had helped him with some paperwork on Revolutionary War claims against the government, and had met him on multiple occasions in the ordinary course of working in the courts, for he had been the county's only sheriff since shortly after statehood.

Being sheriff had been good to Joseph Conway, judging by the girth he had put on since I last saw him; his youth was beginning to fade under the encroachments of jowls and a thickening waist. But he was as smart as he had ever been.