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(one nicker from the animal would ring like a rifle shot through the silence of these woods) or get close enough to the murmuring voices to discern if it would be safe to approach whomever it was and ask for a warm place by their fire. He chose the latter strategy.
    Taking one slow, muffled step at a time, he edged towards the knoll and the coils of woodsmoke. When he was within a few yards, he eased himself up the slope of the ridge. Then he crawled along its height until he was at last able to look into the wintry glade below him. What he saw was a log hut, no more than ten by ten, windowless (on the two sides he could see), but sporting a lime-and-straw chimney—in active service. A trapper’s cabin.
    â€œWell, sir, don’t just sit up there like a frozen cod, come on down and join us.” A face poked out from behind the chimney. “You look like you could do with a wee drop of the craychur.”

    â€œN INIAN T. CONNORS AT YOUR SERVICE,” said the big Irishman with the Yankee-accented brogue and the ready smile. He handed Marc a cup of whisky and urged him to move his feet (unbooted, with much effort and more pain) closer to the fire. “My associate, Mr. Ferris O’Hurley, and I are always pleased to oblige a gentleman of the officers’ fraternity, whether his coat be blue or scarlet.”
    â€œAnd I’m the fella to second that,” added the other one, as dark and wiry and toughened as his partner was florid and generously fleshed. When he drank his grog, he gulped the cupful entire, squeezed his eyes shut as his whiskered cheeks bulged, and then blinked the rotgut down his gullet like a toad with a stubborn fly.
    â€œI am most grateful for your kindness,” Marc said, sipping at his drink and wishing it were hot tea. His horse stood at ease outside the cabin, keeping a donkey company and sharing its feed. When Marc had offered to pay, Connors had taken exaggerated umbrage: “The laws of hospitality in this savage land are as strict as the ones in ancient Greece, and necessarily so. It is we, sir, who are obliged to you for honouring us with your unexpected but worthy presence.”
    â€œYou headin’ for Cobourg?” O’Hurley asked between gulps.
    â€œIn that direction,” Marc said, taking the slice of bread and cheese held out to him by Connors.
    â€œWhat my associate means,” Connors said, with an impish twinkle in his blue eyes, “is that we seldom see an officer of His Majesty’s regiments travelling alone on the Kingston Road.”
    â€œYou know it well, then?”
    â€œIndeed we do, though you have no doubt surmised that we are citizens of a neighbouring state.”
    â€œWe’re up from Buffalo,” O’Hurley said.
    â€œPeddling your wares,” Marc said evenly.
    â€œWe don’t do nothin’ illegal,” O’Hurley said, then he glanced at Connors as quick as a cat.
    â€œWhat my confederate means is that we are not mere Yankee peddlers, as noble as that profession might be. Mr. O’Hurley here, whose father was as Irish as mine, is a bona fidee tinker, a tinsmith and artiste of the first rank. You, good sir, are drinking from a recent product of his craft.”
    The tin cup held by Marc looked as if the donkey had tried to bathe in it, but he refrained from comment. His toes had thawed out, the crude meal and whisky were sitting comfortably on his stomach, and the mere thought of curling up in his own bedroll next to a fire was beginning to warm him all over.
    â€œMr. O’Hurley here travels these parts—highway and back road alike—several times a year. He not only sells a grateful citizenry household items unattainable in the British half of America, though commonplace in the great Republic to the south, but he repairs anything constructed of metal, and where repair will not suffice, he fashions originalworks with the touch of a true master—an impresario, you might say,