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pillowlike mittens were a necessity on a night like this.
    Levi stepped in with his coat still on his arm—and though nearly dressed, Elma vanished behind a curtain.
    “Where’s Elma?” he asked absently.
    “She is hid behind the bed,” Mrs. Ring said primly.
    “Don’t mind me,” the carpenter scoffed. “I want you to tie my hair.”
    His long hair secured and coat arranged, Levi stepped out into the falling darkness of Greenwich Street.
    As Mrs. Ring lit the candles in the common room, the front door groaned with her husband’s return from the Friends meeting. For an inventor, Elias was curiously slow to fixtheir cockeyed door; but then again, so were the carpenter, apprentice, and shipwright who lived in the boardinghouse.Elias settled into the commons room with his boarders Sylvanus and Lacey—all while Elma dithered over her dress and looked impatiently outside.
    She had just gotten around to borrowing a muff from a neighbor when Levi stepped back in.
    He wasn’t staying long. His brother had been entertaining guests, it seemed, and so now he’d need to go over yet a third time—to finally get the day’s work done.
    “The clock has just struck eight,” Mrs. Ring marveled.
    He’d be putting in a late Sunday indeed, but it couldn’t be helped. The boarders and the Rings went off to bed, and after a brief respite in his room, Levi departed once again, his footsteps coming heavilydown the boardinghouse staircase.Mrs. Ring, being in a ground-floor bedroom, couldn’t help but put her ear to the door.
    What are you doing?
asked Elias drowsily.
    Shh
.
    She could hear—she thought—another person following Levi, and then a whispering in the hallway. The hushed voice stopped, cut off by a loud groan from the half-broken front door—and then, nothing more.
    Mrs. Ring blew out her candle, and the heavy silence of a long, dark winter’s night descended.
    L EVI ’ S APPRENTICE paced the parlor and tended to the fire, passing the time. He shared a room with the carpenter, but as keys were expensive and carefully protected, it was only Levi who could unlock its door. And now, after returning home for the evening, the boy was locked out; even Mrs. Ring couldn’t get him in.
    It was ten o’clock when Levi got back, tired from his work.
    “Go to bed,” he sighed to his young apprentice, fishing the key out of his pocket. He spotted Mrs. Ring, up in her bedclothes, lingering by the edge of the parlor.
    “Is Hope got home?” Levi asked.
    “No,” she replied. There was the Friends meeting, and Hope—unlike her cousin Elma—was the kind of convert who would stay late. But that, at least, left someone else for him to pass the time with before turning in.
    “Is Elma gone to bed?”
    “No,” Mrs. Ring said, fussing about the room a bit. “She is gone out. At least, I think I saw her ready to go, and have good reason to think she went.”
    Elias was up now as well, and Mrs. Ring shooed him away.
    “I’m surprised she should go out so late at night—and alone,” the carpenter mused.
    “I’ve no reason to think she went alone,” Mrs. Ring said primly.
    Levi, sitting by the fire, considered this thoughtfully for amoment, and then rested his head heavily against his hand. He wasn’t going to bother asking who she might have gone out with. Except for Croucher, the boardinghouse residents were young—even the Rings themselves were still in their twenties—and for a hardworking carpenter, the subtle currents of courtships could be too much trouble to work out.
    Dawn broke the next morning overa cold and cloudy sky, and Levi readied himself for the usual breakfast. You couldexpect bread, cheese, preserved apples, eggs, and a solid draft of warm beer. Tea and coffee were only slowly taking hold at breakfast in the finer houses, and the city’s old Dutch families still drank cocoa at breakfast—but for a kitchen full of groggy apprentices and artisans,warm beer remained the drink of choice in the morning.