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that she did, that she could see her eyes go wide and her body stiffen whenever she felt their hands grasping at her. Yet she had never noticed that anyone along Paradise Alley had much luck, no matter where they contrived to touch the Jew girl.
    She saw no one—but now she could hear the noise again, rising up from all around her. The same marching sound she had heard before. The low, ominous murmur of men’s voices and the tramp of their feet, as if all the City were on the move.
    The mob was out.
    At least they weren’t stopping yet. Still moving uptown, past them, God’s mercy for that.
    Billy was still uptown, at the Colored Orphans’ Asylum at Forty-third Street and the Fifth Avenue. He would be trapped up there, she realized with a jolt, unless he was already swinging back down the Bowery. She tried to picture him—moving warily but fast, his pay in his pocket. They could be out of the City before anything even got started—
    No. She forced herself to face the truth of the situation. It was no good to do otherwise, she had learned that if she had learned nothing else in this life. Better Billy go to ground, and be safe, if the mob wasreally out. Even if he got back in the next few minutes, it still wouldn’t be a smart idea to head out on the streets now.
    Ruth ran her eyes over their possessions, waiting by the door. All her thoughts of how free she would feel, how relieved once they got on the ferry, dissipating instantly. Instead, she forced herself to think about what they had, here and now, and what they would need.
    There was enough food to last a few days, she had seen to that for their travels. What else, what else? Water. They were nearly out; she hadn’t sent Milton to the pump last night, figuring they would be gone. There was no help for it now, she would have to go out. She took a deep breath, picked up the two buckets by the door.
    She looked in on the children again in their room, thinking she would simply lock them in while she walked to the pump in the square. But Milton, her oldest, was already up. He smiled sheepishly at her from the bed where he lay, reading his book. Looking serious at once when he saw her face, listening with her to the growing noise outside.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked, and she had to smile despite her worry, just to look at him.
    Her boy. Her firstborn. Always so quick to understand, to sympathize.
    â€œNothin’ to fret yourself about,” she told him, as easily as she could. “Just some men about—”
    â€œAre we goin’ still?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know now. Not right away, at least.”
    It had been impossible to keep their preparations from him, the boy was too alert for that. They had not told him why, at least. She had never told him much of anything about her life before his father. It was not so much to spare his feelings as she was ashamed to have him think of her like that, the way she had been, when she had lived with Johnny Dolan.
    â€œWhere’s Da?” he asked.
    â€œUp with his orphans—”
    He looked a little relieved, she was sorry to see. Billy was always too hard on the boy. He never liked him reading so much, even though it was he who had insisted on sending Milton to the free schools for as long as he could go. He wanted him up fresh and well rested when he went out to help him on a job.
    â€œYou’re no good to me like that,” he would harry the boy, especiallywhen he was in his more sour, hungover moods. “You get up from that bed, you come in to wash, get your breakfast, first thing you do.”
    But there was no stopping him. Milton reached for a book when he woke up in the morning, he read after supper until he fell asleep before the coal fire in the grate. He would rather read than sleep, or eat, and she tried to puzzle out what he was at now. Once it had been patriotic histories of the nation, books such as The Life of Washington, with the