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his thoughts into something resembling logic. But it didn’t work. All of a sudden, a door opened in the back of the hotel and the cook came out carrying a bucket of slop. He dumped it into a barrel behind the building and disappeared inside again.
    Matthew’s face brightened with a brilliant idea. He went up to the kitchen door and pried it open a tiny bit. Inside, the cook and his two assistants slaved over their blazing stoves, mixing cauldrons of brew and turning meat on a spit over an open fire. None of them noticed him looking in on them. He snuck into the kitchen.
    Matthew knew something about that hotel that almost no one else knew. He ducked into the pantry. He slid along the rows of jars and hams hanging from the ceiling to the other end of the pantry, where another door opened behind the bar.
    He hid inside the pantry until the bartender went out to get another crate of whiskey bottles from the cellar. Then, Matthew crouched down and slunk behind the bar to the dining room window, where he hid behind a curtain.

Chapter 9
    Polly and the Master sat at a table just across the room. From his hiding place, Matthew heard the Master giving the butler his order for the meal.
    “And bring us your best bottle of brandy, too,” the Master told him.
    The butler left, and the Master snapped his napkin open and laid it in his lap.
    “You shouldn’t have done that,” Polly told him. “I told you in my letter that I don’t drink spirits.”
    “You did tell me that,” the Master replied. “Well, then, I’ll drink it all myself.”
    “You will not!” Polly exclaimed. “I won’t let you.”
    “How will you stop me?” the Master asked.
    “If you drink it all,” Polly replied, “you would be so drunk you wouldn’t be able to walk home.”
    “You’re right,” the Master admitted. “Well, then, I’ll drink part of it by myself.”
    “I didn’t know you were such a libertine,” Polly remarked.
    “Me, a libertine?” the Master asked. “No, I just enjoy a nice drink every now and then. I have to celebrate my own wedding tomorrow, even if no one else will celebrate it with me.”
    “Won’t anyone in town celebrate it with you?” Polly asked
    The Master cocked his head. “It’s strange. Word seems to have gotten around that tomorrow is a sorrowful day. I don’t understand it, but you’d think from talking to people around this town that they were going to the church tomorrow to celebrate a funeral instead of a wedding.”
    Polly looked away.
    The Master scrutinized her. “And you don’t seem all that happy about it, either.”
    “I’m just tired,” Polly replied. “The journey must have tired me out more than I realized.”
    From his hiding place behind the curtain, Matthew heard the heavy silence that followed. How well he knew that silence, when the Master peered into your heart and soul!  He saw exactly what went on in a person’s innermost being. That silence hung over the dining room, waiting to fall on the heads of everyone in it.
    “Has something happened?” the Master asked.
    “What can have happened?” Polly asked. “I’ve been here all day.”
    “You seem especially upset,” the Master replied.
    “You already know what happened yesterday,” Polly told him.
    “You seem more upset than you were yesterday,” the Master maintained. “If you were here all day, I would expect you to be at least somewhat recovered from your shock yesterday. But you aren’t.”
    “I told you,” Polly replied. “I’m tired. You would be tired, too, if you traveled all that way.”
    The Master didn’t respond to this comment. “And just now, when I mentioned celebrating our wedding, you evaded the subject.”
    “I didn’t evade it,” Polly muttered.
    The Master persisted. “I find this strange, because it’s the same reaction I have had from everyone else about our wedding. You would think I was going to the gallows instead of the church. I could understand it from men who’ve been