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past Detroit, if he was miserly. The minister mentally figured the cost of a new valise and shirt collar and change of trousers, quickly realizing that he’d have to go without. Three days from home, he thought, and already I have lost everything I own. He supposed it was plain to everyone that he was a country greenhorn.
    The man beside him muttered sleepily, then jerked upright. He said, “Apologies.”
    Reverend Stone tucked the bills into his pocket. “None required.”
    “My jay.” The man rubbed his face, blinking. “I’m fairly well put out. I could probably sleep through to San Francisco if we went that far. Do you know where we are now?”
    “Somewhere past Albany.”
    “Then I’d have been woked anyway by the conductor. The line ends in Buffalo.”
    The man offered his hand and introduced himself as Jonah Crawley, his voice holding a drawl that might have been a foreign accent or simple drowsiness. He said, “I don’t suppose you have a bit of niggerhead.”
    “Even if I had, I wouldn’t now. My valise was stolen at Garton.”
    The man’s weary face betrayed only mild interest. “That so?”
    Reverend Stone nodded. An urge for conversation had grown in him. “It was my own fault, partly—I left the valise on my seat while I stepped out for air. I should have kept hold of it. I’m not accustomed to this sort of travel, you see. I have come all the way from Newell, Massachusetts, bound for Detroit. I am traveling to meet my son.”
    Jonah Crawley yawned. His teeth were stained a rich, marbled yellow. “That so?”
    “He’s not aware that I am coming—I’ve not seen him in three years now. I suppose he will be quite surprised to see me.”
    “I expect you have a pretty nice speech prepared.”
    The minister nodded. In truth he had not considered what he might say when he found his son. He would tell the boy about his mother. And then…what? Stern questions about the boy’s disappearance, his whereabouts the last years? Or breezy chitchat about Newell, news from the congregation and Corletta and Elisha’s childhood friends. The possibilities were awkward, incongruous. In his mind’s eye Elisha was thirteen years old, his hair tousled and fingernails crusted with creek mud, his arms outgrown his shirt cuffs. Reverend Stone could not imagine him as a young man of sixteen.
    “I’m sorry to hear about your cold luck,” the man said. “Folks of the itinerant variety don’t seem to have much regard for the welfare of others.”
    “Why do you suppose that is?”
    Jonah Crawley blinked, as if surprised by the question. “Well, I suppose some of them are running away from trouble. Sometimes that trouble was deserved. They’re moving toward what they hope is a better place. Usually it ain’t.”
    “I don’t believe itinerants are more callous than most. Lack of regard seems a common enough trait.”
    The man grinned. “You must be a constable. That’s a fairly unchari-table judgment of folks.”
    “Not at all! I only mean that men are occasionally careless—they forget to be governed by their conscience.”
    “I prefer to ignore my conscience,” the man joked. “It gives me the feeling of being a decent person.”
    “And that is important to you? Feeling like a decent person?”
    Crawley stared hard at the minister. “Of course it is.”
    The man turned away, rubbing stiffness from his neck as Reverend Stone watched him sidelong. He tried to recall the last time he’d had a conversation with a stranger. A gruff but inquisitive tin peddler who’d knocked at the parsonage door eight months ago, a year perhaps. The man had finally admitted his belief in the doctrine of immaculate conception with a solemn, regretful air. Reverend Stone had bought a pair of ornate bull’s-eye lanterns, out of pity for the fellow.
    “Milton allowed Satan to be touched by conscience. ‘Now conscience wakes despair that slumbered, wakes the bitter memory of what he was.’ Yes? Of course Satan ignored