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plantation that adjoined the land her father had won at poker. They had resented the presence of the Americans, and there had been little communication between the two pieces of property, though there were a number of paths as well as the main river road connecting them. Regardless, each family had always known what the other was doing, whether they were ill or well, when there was cause for grief or celebration. The reason was simple; most of the slaves of the two places were related by blood, and it was their constant visiting back and forth with news that had created many of the worn paths.
    Then one morning while out riding, nearly two years after Nathan Hamilton had taken possession of the plantation, Anya escaped the stableboy who acted as her groom. She allowed her pony to wander in the direction of the other plantation, craning her neck in curiosity to see what might be seen. She was not paying attention to her progress, and soon became lost on the winding trails.
    It was Jean, a truant also, who found her. He took her home with him, introduced her to his maman and his père, to his grand-mère in her lace cap and his Tante Cici, who was confined to her chair with a bad leg; to his cousins who lived with them, and his Scots tutor, who had been searching for him since breakfast.
    His family carried on over her as if she were the most intrepid of young females, to have traveled the few miles separating the two places alone. They fed her bonbons and dragées, or candy-coated almonds, and allowed her to sip a small glass of wine. They sent a messenger to Beau Refuge to relieve the anxiety of her father and stepmother, but insisted that she stay for lunch. A holiday was declared, education not being considered a matter of vital importance, and she and Jean and his many cousins played games and rode in a cart pulled by a pet goat, sang and danced to the music played by Tante Cici. Finally, Jean, being all of ten or eleven years old himself, escorted her home, staunchly determined to support her as she explained to her papa how she had come to stray so far. Long before that day was over she had loved him. She had never stopped.
    Once at Beau Refuge, Anya invited Jean in to meet her father and mother and baby Celestine. But though Jean had told her about his aunt’s bad leg and about one of his younger cousins who was “slow,” as well as explaining the presence of the older gentleman who was a friend of his father and who lived with his family in a guesthouse with a barn owl in the attic and wrote books about ghosts, she did not tell him about her Uncle Will. That came much later, when she knew beyond a doubt that he would not desert her once he knew.
    William Hamilton, Uncle Will, her father’s brother, had arrived one day without warning. Younger than Nathan by a year, his wife and two children had been killed when their house caught fire in the middle of the night. Uncle Will had saved himself, but could not forgive himself for not saving his family. Since Nathan was his only relative living, Will had come to be with him, and to settle in a place where there were no reminders of the tragedy.
    At first he had seemed all right, though he made little effort to throw off his depression of the spirits. But always he would moan in his sleep and cry out. Then came days when he would lie and scream until he was hoarse. He began to roam the house at night, beating the walls with his hands. Once he tried to cut his wrists with a kitchen knife and, when Nathan stopped him, attacked his own brother. It was after he broke the lock of the cabinet where Nathan kept his guns, threatened Madame Rosa with a fowling piece, then shot himself in the foot with it that Anya’s father confined him.
    It had been the practice at the time to confine those for whom life had proved too much, the insane, in the parish jails throughout the state, there being no other facilities, though since then a special hospital had been built at Jackson to