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someone, touching, scraping the door. Tilting her head, listening, she heard it again.
    “What—” she murmured, finding the sound foreign, strange.
    Once again the peculiar scrabbling came from the threshold. Tierney set aside the teapot, stepped to the door, reached for the latch, turned it—
    With a crash the door slammed inward. Startled, Tierney stepped back, and just in time to avoid being struck by the figure that had been crouched there and that now tumbled into the room.
    Out of the bundle of clothes, torn and askew, came a sound like the mew of an injured animal. Horrified, Tierney watched as the figure slowly stirred, raised itself slightly, and fell back to the floor.
    “Annie? Annie! ”

A nnie!
    It was indeed Annie. Battered and soiled, with her dark hair escaped from its confines, spreading like an ominous cloud about her head and shoulders, she crouched at the doorway. No sound escaped the prostrate figure, but when Tierney knelt and attempted to lift her, the face that was raised to hers was runneled with tears.
    Tierney wasted no more time on speech. Getting her arm around Annie, she lifted her until she could slip her arm firmly around her waist. Then, Annie doing a sort of hop on one foot, they progressed enough so that Tierney could shut the door.
    The room closed around them, quiet and shadowed; the fire flickered invitingly against the evening’s chill, and the lamp shed its steady, cheering glow over all. Annie, as though come into a haven, gave a long, shuddering sigh, and sank onto the settle before the fireplace. Not knowing whether to tend to whatever injury there might be or simply to offer comfort, Tierney knelt at her friend’s knee.
    “Annie. Can ye talk, lass?”
    Anne’s head drooped. “Aye,” she whispered. “Though I dinna wish to.”
    “Even now!”
    “I canna imagine where ’twill end, once ’tis said.”
    “’Twill end here, Annie, if that’s what ye wish.”
    “It must, Tierney.” Fresh tears ran, silent and unchecked, from Anne’s puffed eyes.
    “Lean back, Annie. Get yer breath. I’ll be back in a second.”
    Annie obeyed, as one deathly weary, deathly ill. Tierney searched out the cloths used during her father’s illness that were washed and carefully stored away for any future need (nothing went to waste in the crofts and shanties of Binkiebrae). A little hot water from the kettle, a little cold water from the pail, and Tierney applied the warm and comforting application to Anne’s face, dabbing away the soil and tears, exposing bruises and a cut not noticed before.
    Anne was shivering, and Tierney put a shawl around her shoulders. While Anne’s breathing slowed and her tears dried, Tierney tended the fire, emptied the basin and put away the wet cloth, filled the teapot that was ready and waiting, and, finally, filled two cups with the fragrant brew.
    Anne came up out of the settle’s corner to an upright position, to take the cup and eventually try a cautious sip. Soon a bit of pink was returning to her white cheeks, the result being that the bruises rising there stood out, stark and ugly.
    Tierney, watching over the rim of her own cup, was horrified at the marks of abuse. Someone—Annie’s father? one of her brothers?—had wielded a cruel hand against her. How could they! Annie, gentle and easygoing, spending her young womanhood taking care of those same males . . . had they, in careless disregard and with cruel intent, turned on her? If so, it wasn’t the first time. Tierney recalled, darkly, the other time Annie had hidden a face that had been, to a lesser extent, similarly battered.
    Paul Fraser was known to be a rough man; his sons, cheerful, laughing young men, were quick-tempered and undisciplined. Anne’s mother, a woman of virtue and grace, had been the gentling influence in that home. With her gone, was Annie at risk? Tierney grew cold thinking about it and again stirred the fire to greater efficiency.
    When Anne handed Tierney her cup,