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and adored her stepmother, but now that she was finished with school, she was finding her days long and not a little boring. There was the constant round of cooking and cleaning and changing of linens attendant on the keeping of a hotel, of course, and she tried to make herself as useful as she could. But under her stepmother Sophie’s hand, the Temperance House Hotel was superbly organized. Every day Martha would complete her assigned tasks in short order and then start looking for ways to keep herself busy.
    She spent hours walking the shore of Lake Ontario, picking her way over the rough stones and marvelling at the things that washed up on them: driftwood; pieces of ship’s tackle and lengths of rope; broken crockery; occasionally an apple or an orange, rotting and sodden from its time in the water. When the weather was too inclement for her to spend time outside, she would read. Newspapers were stacked up in the parlour for the convenience of the hotel guests, and she would go through these from front to back. Occasionally, one of the guests would leave behind a book. Martha would read it before her father had a chance to mail it back to its owner. Sometimes there was no forwarding address for the person whose book they thought it was, and these relics she kept, to reread when there was nothing else.
    She envied the boys she had shared a classroom with. Most of them hadn’t even completed the basic education offered at the village school, but left at eleven or twelve or thirteen, some of them to help their fathers farm, but others because they found employment at the mill or on one of the ships that carried goods and passengers back and forth along the lake. She understood that these occupations were not open to her. They required physical strength and a fortitude that she was told she didn’t have, although she felt herself to be nearly as strong as any of the boys, and just as ready for a challenge.
    Some of the girls left early, too, either because they were needed at home or to work as hired help on one of the local farms until they were old enough to get married and have families of their own. It seemed that women were destined to cook and sew and clean, even if they did it as a business and not just on behalf of their own families — Sophie in the kitchen at the hotel; Meribeth Scully, the seamstress at the dry goods store; Mrs. Crawford, who ran a boarding house near the harbour.
    Martha wanted something more. She just didn’t know what it might be. But of one thing she was sure: she stood a far better chance of finding it if she went with Thaddeus than if she stayed home. It wouldn’t quite be the same kind of adventure as sailing on a ship or working at a mill — it would be more cooking and cleaning when you got right down to it — but the unexpected seemed to happen to her grandfather wherever he went, and if Martha lived with him she could be a part of whatever thrilling circumstance came his way.
    Thaddeus was in a fine mood as he trotted his horse home toward Cobourg, elated not only by the success of the camp meeting and anticipation of the forthcoming debate, but by the unfamiliar wad of extra money in his pocket. As soon as the meeting ended — “one of the most successful in recent memory,” as everyone agreed — he and Small worked their way through their regular schedule of appointments, not only to further introduce Thaddeus to the Methodist meetings, but to let everyone know that the coming Sunday’s service would offer something special. “You would do well to come,” Thaddeus told them with a sly smile. “It should be most entertaining.”
    They all seemed to agree. The news of his confrontation with the Baptist minister had travelled ahead of him, and there were numerous requests for extra meetings, as well as a wedding and two funerals for people who, as far as he knew, had not been members of the Methodist Episcopal Church