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things, depending which way one turned into it—the Medfield road if one headed for Medfield, the Boston road if one headed for Boston. Alice knew well enough what lay in one direction and little enough what lay in the other, but the one was enough for her to make her choice. She stepped into the Boston road.

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    A lice clutched her basket in the fingertips of her burned hand and pulled down a few wisps of hair to attempt to conceal her cheek and neck; she didn’t want to attract any kind of attention whatever. She walked at the steady pace of a servant on an errand, crossing the road as if to enter one of the shops if someone appeared ahead, and as she walked she counted off each familiar establishment as she passed: Courtenay the smith, Hatch the cobbler, Shaw the weaver. As she left the village cluster she counted off the familiar farms as she’d counted the shops in town: Houghton, Young, Wood, Walker, Sexton, until the road stretched empty on either side and she had nothing to count but the crows, or the clouds, or her own footsteps. She began to feel more and more like a drifting ship with each place she left behind. She couldn’t imagine herself in front of any of these places again, but neither could she imagine herself against any other horizon. At times Alice slowed to ease the discomfort in her shoulder and hand, both of which pulsed whenever her heel hit the ground, but in the main she kept to a steady pace, feeling Verley behind her like a great tidal wave, ready to roll over her and suck her back to Medfield.
    After Alice had walked a fair way she stopped alongside a horse trough to plunge her hand into the coolness—a rust-red star now flamed out around the central wound—and the cold felt so good she dipped her face as well, the black bottom of the trough reminding her of the water on the ship, but as she’d drunk that and survived she decided to drink again there. She wiped her face on her skirt and noted the pink stain left behind on the cloth; she attempted to scrub it out against the trough, and when she finished she was wet in more places than she was dry, but she didn’t let it trouble her. The day was as fine as any she could have wished, the sun just hot enough to dry her clothes but not hot enough to overheat her, the road smooth and hard, as it wouldn’t have been in the rainy months before. As Alice moved into her stride again she thought of the day, the road, that portion of luck that had set her loose in such a season instead of another, and wondered if she should take it as a sign. Alice trusted in God, but she also trusted in signs; in truth, she’d never got quite clear in her head where one took up from the other. She’d walked the Dedham road toward Mr. Morton as she might have walked any road that contained no turning, that route being the only one she knew, and so, in a way, had it been with the Boston road, but from now on all would be different. Alice had formed no great plan for when she arrived in town beyond hoping to hide in its crowds; once she got there she would need some sort of sign to guide her future turnings.
    Alice calculated by the sun that she’d walked nearly three hours when the traffic began to thicken. Farmers drove pigs and sheep and cows ahead of them along the road; carts rolled by loaded with poultry crates, barrel staves, and shingles; women shouldered past carrying baskets of new greens, dried herbs, and great, round cheeses. Alice stooped to fuss with her shoe every time another walker drew too close, afraid the next pair of eyes to fix on her would belong to a Medfield neighbor who would report to the Verleys the minute he got home— saw your girl on the Boston road —but no one appeared to take any great notice of her.
    At length Alice came to a narrow, marshy spit that she remembered from her childhood trip out of the town, the gallows marking the entry gates hanging empty but still full of warning. Alice passed through the gates, following the