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courage, he would have reported them in their hundreds of thousands. At the Cork workhouse, there were queues a mile long of people, half-naked, young and old, waiting in the snow for someone to die inside the walls so that they might take their place. It was reported from Leitrim that two wagonloads of boy orphans had been turned away from the workhouse gates. They had been found the next morning abandoned and frozen to death. The magistrate reported he had counted thirty-two bodies and ordered they should be buried together in lime.
    Captain Shelley had been gone a fortnight and still Kate had not received his promised letter. She asked after him as often as she dared and as discretely as she could but no one could or would tell more than she knew already. February the first, the day of his resignation, passed without any further news and she became more and more anxious. Her father mistakenly interpreted this as her impatience at being housebound and promised that just as soon as the weather broke and the thaw began, he would ask Edward Ogilvie to call again. He would have liked to involve her more in the Commission’s work, but the Reverend Martineau reminded him of his daughter’s emotional lapses and pointed out how much concern it would cause in London should her sympathies and opinions ever become public. Sir William agreed.
    His work was at a critical stage. His relief programme was now into its eighth month and he still wanted to believe that it would be finished by late summer. But Trevelyan was, as ever, introducing further complications. He was insisting that it was not the government’s intention to freely give food to any but the truly destitute. It was his opinion that the Irish peasant was not so poor as to be unable to buy food if it was cheaply available. With that in mind he had persuaded Prime Minister Peel to authorise the buying of shiploads of maize from America to sell on the Irish markets.
    This enraged the Irish grain merchants and their bankers, all disciples of free trade, who feared cheap imports would undercut the market with a consequent loss of profit.
    They had no need to worry. The Corn Law and a British government brimming with contradictions ensured the market stalls in Dublin, Cork and Waterford would still be heavy with oats and wheat and the butchers would continue to hang out their hooks of beef and lamb and pork and every sort of wild fowl, so that a stranger with a full purse might wonder who it was who was hungry. But those with empty pockets and empty stomachs knew well enough. Everything they owned had been pawned to the gombeen man, the wandering pawnbroker who went about the countryside with his donkey and cart, swindling the last penny from a hungry man and taking the shawl off a suckling child for less.
    There were times, especially in this cold weather, when Sir William, who was not by nature a hard man, wondered whether his government might not be more generous. In one moment of rare courage he had even suggested it in a letter to Trevelyan, but was brusquely told that the government had set a ceiling on the amount of money allocated to Irish relief and it was already over budget. What was being provided was considered enough for the poor to survive one famished winter. The devout Sir Charles reminded his Commissioner that conscience was not always the best guide and that God and market forces were on the same side. To interfere was tantamount to economic blasphemy. Sir William was careful not to mention his concerns again.

    Kate had made a pact with Captain Shelley and already he seemed to have abandoned it. She had waited for his letters and the waiting had meant so much. Imprisoned by snow, their alliance promised liberation, his message would revive her spirit. He would tell her what she must do to become part of what was happening. But he had left over a month ago and there had been silence since.
    The thaw began in the third week of February. The wind turned around