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heard Shaw say in the Insurance Room. The wine merchant quickly realized he was in trouble: He’d never said those words in the coffeehouse, he insisted.
    “It’s a damned lie!” he blustered.
    The old colonel did not like hearing his general spoken ill of, but he liked being called a liar even less. He promptly flogged the wine merchant in the middle of Wall Street, and Shaw did not find any defenders. Some New Yorkers, it seemed, still approved of swift justice.
    “W HAT MEANS this melancholy sound of Bells, which daily strikes our ears?” the Reverend Linn’s voice rang over the pews of the North Dutch Church. “What means this sorrow which marks the face of every Citizen?”
    The city that Sunday was swathed in black, from the veils hung over women’s faces to the armbands worn by the men. In the distance muffled bells rang from every church; by order of the city council, the bells had been wrapped so as to toll in a ghostly, mournful chorus.
    “What mean these sable ensigns that hang in our Churches?” the elderly minister called out, motioning at the black crepe newly hung over the pews. “We are witnesses this day that no character, however exalted, that no services however long continued and extensive, can save from the stroke of
Death
.”
    Nearly all the city had gathered in melancholy masses—all,that is, except for Levi Weeks. After breakfasting in the boardinghouse,he trooped over to his brother’s lumberyard for a day of hard work. EvenEzra Weeks himself hadn’t stayed home, but Levi was young and ambitious; in any case, he had to make doors for the new house of Mr. Cummings, and the planes and saws wouldn’t work themselves.
    Levi had a good deal of labor ahead of him. Cummings was a wealthy merchant with agrowing business on Broadway anda new two-story home, and Levi had been handedan order for eight doors, all of different sizes. As ten o’clock approached, the sun was shining fully on the low wooden houses by the corner of Greenwich and Harrison, and it was turning out to be a fine day outside—as good as any that week for tackling the job.
    Damn it
.
    Levi sprawled onto the ground, his boot caught—he’d torna gash in his knee, the bright red blood oozing in the cold morning air.
    His brother was still out at the church; straightening himself, Levi hobbled back down Greenwich to the boardinghouse by the corner of Barclay Street. Inside, he ran into another boarder, Sylvanus Russel, who was certain the carpenter wouldn’t make it back out to one of the later church meetings that Sunday.
    “Levi, you won’t be able to go out today,” he said, peering at his bloody knee.
    “I am determined to,” Levi insisted, before allowing, “tonight.”
    Elma fussed over him; as ill as she had been much of the fall, and for all the moodiness she had about her, it was the rare chance for her to tend to someone else. Shefollowed him upstairs and plastered his knee, and he rested awhile in his room. Illness and injury were common enough plights thatboardinghouse beds, coarsely built of poplar and painted green, were always constructed low to the ground, the better to crawl into and out of when sick or dying. By the afternoon, though,he and Elma were back downstairs and sitting by the fire in the common room while he nursed his banged-up knee. It was proving a sleepy Sunday indeed:The theater had even canceled the day’s performance of
Lover’s Vows
out of deferenceto the late president. Eventually, Elma’s company could no longer quiet the carpenter’s restlessness. As the sun set, Levi plowed through a large dinner, intent on going back to the lumberyard to finish the day’s work.
    Elma disappeared back upstairs and dressed to go out for the evening as well.
    “Which looks best?” she asked Mrs. Ring. She’d picked out acalico gown and a white dimity petticoat, and long white ribbons—though such choices would matter little until she found another muff. She was missing hers, and the thick,