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against each other until she felt a desperate vertigo, as if she could at any moment pitch backward and plunge head first down the well shaft and drown there, the sky far above her, her last vision but a bright circle set in the dark, no bigger than a full moon.
    Her head spun and she reached with her free hand and held to the stonework of the well. And then just for a moment things steadied, and there indeed seemed to be a picture in the mirror. It was like a poorly executed calotype. Vague in its details, low in contrast, grainy. What she saw was a wheel of bright light, a fringe of foliage all around. Perhaps a suggestion of a road through a corridor of trees, an incline. At the center of the light, a black silhouette of a figure moved as if walking, but the image was too vague to tell if it approached or walked away. But wherever it was bound, something in its posture suggested firm resolution. Am I meant to follow, or should I wait its coming? Ada wondered.
    Then dizziness swept over her again. Her knees gave way and she slumped to the ground. Everything whirled about her for a second. Her ears rang and her whole mind was filled with lines from the hymn Wayfaring Stranger. She thought she might faint, but suddenly the spinning world caught and held still. She looked to see if anyone had noticed her fall, but Sally and Esco were engaged in their work to the exclusion of all else. Ada picked herself up and walked to the porch.
    —See anything? Esco said.
    —Not exactly, Ada said.
    Sally gave her a sharp look, started to go back to stringing beans, then changed her mind and said, You look white-eyed. Are you not well?
    Ada tried to listen but could not focus her thoughts on Sally’s voice. In her mind she still saw the dark figure, and the brave phrases of the hymnsang on in her ears: “Traveling through this world below. No toil, no sick nor danger, in that fair land to which I go.” She was sure the figure was important, though she could put no face to it.
    —Did you see something down in that well or not? Sally said.
    —I’m not sure, Ada said.
    —She looks white-eyed, Sally said to Esco.
    —It’s just a story people tell, Esco said. I’ve looked in there time and again and never seen a thing myself.
    —Yes, said Ada. There was nothing.
    But she could not shake the picture from her mind. A wood. A road through it. A clearing. A man, walking. The feeling that she was meant to follow. Or else to wait.
    The clock rang out four chimes as flat and wanting in music as striking a pike blade with a hammer.
    Ada rose to go, but Sally made her sit. She reached and put the heel of her hand to Ada’s cheek.
    —You’re not hot. Have you eaten today? she said.
    —I had something, Ada said.
    —Not much I bet, Sally said. You come on with me, I’ll give you something to take with you.
    Ada followed her inside. The house smelled of dried herbs and strings of peppers that hung in rows down the long central hall, ready to spice the various relishes and sauces and pickles and chutneys that Sally was famous for making. All around the fireplace mantels and doorframes and mirrors were bows of red ribbon, and the newel post in the hall was painted in red and white stripes like a barber pole.
    In the kitchen, Sally went to a cupboard and took out a pottery crock of blackberry preserves, the mouth sealed with beeswax. She gave it to Ada and said, This’ll be good on your leftover supper biscuits. Ada said her thanks without mentioning her failure as biscuit maker. On the porch, she asked Esco and Sally to stop by if they were out in their buggy and found themselves near Black Cove. She walked away, carrying the shawl and the crock of preserves in her arms.
    The old footpath crossing the ridge into Black Cove began not five hundred yards up the road from the Swangers’ farm, and it climbed steeply away from the river. It first passed through open woods of second-growth oak and hickory and poplar, and then closer to the ridge