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swivel neck and is their father’s handiwork. He made a similar doll for Maggie, but she lost hers recently. Not that she cares, not really. She is too old for child’s play.
    Maggie and Katie peer on down at Leah as she hangs up her cloak, peels off her gloves, smoothes her chestnut hair, then enters thekeeping room to a storm of greetings, explanations and tales, to myriad flourishments of the Lewis pamphlet. Leah flourishes her own copy.
    “Did you know these are being sold in Rochester?” she exclaims. “And in the street. My heavens, to see my family’s name so publicly writ. It did give me a turn. A moment … there.” She presses her hand to her chest, says to Mother: “And why was I not informed straightways? Why did I need to find this out from a pamphlet? It was no small humiliation, I must say.”
    “But you’re always so busy, aren’t you? And your father, he … that is, he thought it best that we wait before making a fuss.”
    “Did he.”
    “Yes, but I am so very relieved you’re here now, aren’t I? And I am so sorry for not telling you sooner. Should we call on Calvin also? He is always ready to protect us, isn’t he?”
    “True. I counsel we wait, however. Too many opinions can obscure the right course.”
    “Then you’ll sort this out? Laws, but it is such a perplexity.”
    “I will sort it, Mother. Yes.”
    “Have I told you about my humours? They are completely wayward. Dr. Hyde said he’d never seen such wayward humours. I’ve taken my grandmother’s everlasting pill, but it hasn’t worked at all, has it?”
    Maggie nudges Katie, mimics their mother’s voice again: “Laws! Isn’t that a wayward humour now? Trundling down the public road? Catch it! Will you please?”
    Katie stifles a giggle.
    Below, Leah is asking for more information about the ghost, and in a fashion that suggests he is no more than a distant, unpleasant relation.
    “But this ghost, Leah,” Mother cries. “He knows more than peoples’ ages, doesn’t he? And much more than the whereabouts of lost keys.”
    The company agrees. Voices stack one upon the other. Questions have been asked of the Glory, of what lies beyond, of how the dead fare. The peddler’s ghost seems to know everyone.
    “But what fashion of spirit is this?” Leah asks, as if she is puzzling out the answer herself. Maggie catches her breath, strains to hear.
    “That’s what we’re trying to fathom, isn’t it?” Mother exclaims. This begets a heated discussion of will-o’-wisps, poltergeists, revenants, fetches and
giengangers
, the distinctions and subcategories. It seems impossible, however, to find a category for this ghost. He is heard, but never seen, and he comes in the broad of day, though he does prefer the night. And thus far he does not seem malevolent. No rattling of chains, no muttered prophecies, no pans hurled about.
    “Why, he’s a real polite sort,” David puts in.
    “Polite or no,” Ruth Culver says, “in my opinion he’s nothing but an interloper. Toss salt all about and clang every bell in creation, that should fix him. I’ve said this thrice or more, but does anyone notice?”
    “Nope,” Maggie says softly. Poor old Ruth. She is related by marriage somehow. Is ever about, ever poking at the fringes, her gaze as resentful and sorrowing as a sin-eater’s. Maggie adopts Ruth’s wheedling tone and whispers to Katie, “I’ve been dead myself for ten years. Here I am a half-rotted skeleton, but does anyone notice?”
    Katie snickers; Leah’s head tips towards the stairway. The girls hold their breath until David says to Leah, “Why, it’s become our belief, dear sister, that we can choose not to be afraid.”
    Everyone agrees on this. Is being afraid a choice? Maggie wonders. She surely hopes so.
    Mother says, “Laws, but that poor peddler had no choice, did he? He was murdered, and with a butcher knife, just like those rumours said. But we found no body, did we?”
    “Murdered? You discovered all