From Sea to Shining Sea by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Page A

cup!” Dickie was exclaiming. He looked a bit cockeyed, and had apparently been greeting many guests with toasts at the sideboard.
    “Lucy Meriwether! Heavens, you were but a child when last I saw ye.”
    “Nor’ve I grown much, Mrs. Clark, but I’ve two little ’uns, even littler’n me,” laughed that thrilling voice, and Jonathan was aware of it even in the crush and babble. He saw her descend from the saddle onto the mounting block, a cascade of dusty skirts. And then Brother Johnny’s handsome face appeared, and Jonathan hugged him and pounded him on the back, and Johnny too was redolent of peach brandy.
    Then they were inside, moving through the hallway, through a gauntlet of half-remembered names, Cabells and Campbells, Redds and Putnams and Purdies and Todds, and of course Rogerses and more Rogerses, of faces familiar but older, of handshakes, callused or soft, of exclamations about how much or how little he had changed. And here was Parson Robertson, his beloved old teacher, thin and dry-skinned and wet-eyed with a long, fond look at his prize pupil. And then finally they were at the sideboard, and he was clinking glasses with his family in the usual toast to homecoming, and the delightful heat of the liquor was spreading down his gorge while the fruity fumes lingered in his head. He looked into the moist, crinkling eyes of his father, who sighed and rocked on his toes and said:
    “Well, son, y’re here! Here for the event!”
    “Here I am! Your last letter told me in about eight ways that I’d better be. Ha, ha! And ye know who I am: your most dutiful son. Home for a wedding and birthdays! Aye!”
    John Clark beamed with pleasure. Jonathan was his favorite son, if he would admit he had a favorite. “So, you remembered our birthdays too! Ah. Shame you missed George. He was here and gone so quick I wasn’t sure I’d really seen—”
    “Oh, but I didn’t miss ’im.”
    “What sayee?”
    “You saw George?” asked Mrs. Clark.
    “He detoured up by Woodstock t’ see me on his way back west. Didn’t he say he would?” Jonathan was stroking his sister Lucy’s red curls as she stood close and embraced his waist.
    “Why, no! Why, that’s a considerable detour,” exclaimed John Clark.
    “Aye. Showed up all a surprise as usual. Said ’e was goin’ to cut up over and take the old Nemacolin Trace to Fort Pitt. Always has to try a new way, as y’ know. Lookee what he brought me from Williamsburg. How could he afford a fine fob like this? I never figured him to make a shilling, that blamed hill-hopper!” Jonathan did not mention that he had forgotten his parents’ birthdays until George had reminded him.
    “Well, well-a-well,” said Mrs. Clark, looking at the fob as Jonathan slipped it back into his waistcoat. Smiling with a private satisfaction, she turned to the Lewises, to lead them up to the room where they’d be staying. She glanced down from the stairs at Jonathan and her husband, who still stood talking to each other in the crowded hallway.
    Someday, she was thinking, someday they’ll esteem my George as he deserves t’ be. Someday. Perhaps.

2

C AROLINE C OUNTY
October 20, 1773
    “D O YOU , O WEN ,” SAID R EVEREND A RCHIBALD D ICK, RECTOR of the Parish of St. Margaret’s, “take this woman, Ann, to be your lawful wedded wife, to love, honor, and cherish, so long as you both shall live?”
    “I do.” Owen’s voice rumbled deep and gentle, and it was a reassuring voice.
    To Ann Rogers Clark, it was the sound of reliability; it was the voice of a man of solidity, like her husband John Clark, whose broad back she was now watching through blurry eyes. She felt Billy stir beside her and she patted his arm to keep him from fidgeting. Around her hushed the breathing and snuffling and whispering of a hundred people or perhaps more, and near the back of the church there were the little knockings and scrapings made by latecomers creeping in, and outside she could hear horses and