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matter how many times guards, generals, friends and fellow politicians warned him, President Lincoln was a man of the people. He rode his carriage along the mall. He invited his constituents to speak with him. Quite simply, Lincoln believed to the core that if he was not available, then he was not serving anyone. To try to change him might well be an effort to change the very soul of the man they all strove so diligently and with such love and admiration to protect.
    Finn didn’t know that he and others could prevail,not forever. He did know, however, that there had been many times when his abilities helped him single out the right person to stop in a crowd. That he had protected his charge on that particular day. He didn’t necessarily face an assassin every time, but often someone bent on harassment, or ready to throw rotten food at the president, or to create a riot out of a rally. He had done well so far, but it only took one mistake…?.
    Like the woman at Gettysburg. Moving toward him, reaching beneath her cloak…
    She had carried a scarf, he reminded himself. She might have meant nothing but a show of worship.
    Yet, she had been so strange. So beautiful, and so different, dangerous…dangerous even if what she had produced had been a hand-knitted scarf. She had wanted to get close to the president, and there had just been that strange difference about her…?.
    He still had that narrow lock of her hair in his wallet. And he still believed that she was out there somewhere, and that, one day, he would find her.
    Of course, now he was here.
    And still thinking about his failure that day!
    Finn chafed at this assignment. He felt better serving the president nearer to him; he was ready to stop a bullet for the man at any time. He felt himself well qualified to do so.
    But he also knew something about the sea, and it was true—he had seen many a naval battle and survived.He’d seen battles the good captain couldn’t begin to imagine.
    Staring into the darkness, assigned to stop a blooming threat before it could fully materialize.
    â€œYou needn’t worry about me,” Finn said. “Whatever course is called, I will be ready.”
    â€œBosun!” the captain called, looking to the man up on the fantail behind them, a sailor who was studying the night with his own spyglass. “Any signs of life?”
    â€œNo, Captain, sir!” the sailor called back. “Not a whisper as of yet!”
    Captain Tremblay looked through the glass again. “I see nothing.”
    Finn narrowed his eyes suddenly, looking toward the shore. He knew that they were in an area where mangrove swamp gave way to rivers and waterways. They were now north in the Florida Keys, nearing the mainland. It was an area where the Atlantic frequently gave way to channels between the islands, where little mangrove spits were in the tectonic process of gathering silt and debris to become islands, and where trim, shallow-draft ships could easily disappear in the blink of an eye.
    â€œThere!” Finn announced suddenly.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œThere…hugging the shore. He must know of an inlet.”
    â€œBosun!” the captain called.
    â€œNothing. I see nothing, sir!” called the lookout.
    â€œIt’s there, believe me,” Finn said. “We didn’t see her,but she’s seen us, and she’s ducking through a channel now, heading for the gulf.”
    As Finn spoke, a break formed in the cloud cover overhead. The moon might be new on this January night, so crisp and cool even, but with cloud cover gone, the sky seemed to be filled with a sudden burst of starlight. Perhaps God himself was on the side of the North, Finn mused.
    And there, just disappearing before them, was what almost appeared to be a ghost ship, a steam clipper, gliding away, her sails down but her masts just caught in a pale sparkle of starlight.
    â€œFull speed ahead, sir!” Finn said.
    â€œMan your