On the Head of a Pin. Janet Kellough

Part I Hallowell 1838

       I

      It happened again as he rode into Demorestville —the heart-stopping moment of recognition that blindsided him whenever he saw anyone who looked even remotely like Sarah.

      It had been three months since he and Betsy had found their daughter’s lifeless body. You would think the grief would begin to ebb, but a mere glimpse of chestnut hair was still enough to set his hands shaking.

      The girl was standing with a cluster of people, most of them young men, but he noted that there were two other girls, as well. Just enough extraneous female presence to satisfy propriety, he figured. She was bidding farewell, face turned toward her friends, as she backed into the street. He had to rein his horse hard to avoid riding straight into her.

      “Oh, dear, I’m sorry,” she said, stifling a giggle with her hand.

      Her hair curled out from under her cap in a familiar way, and her grey eyes met his directly. Even the way she held herself was like Sarah, he thought, though he could see now that she was not as tall, nor did her nose possess that slightly aquiline curve.

      “Good day, Preacher,” she went on. “At least that’s who I think you are. You have the look of a man of God.”

      Her voice didn’t come out edged in the familiar low rich timbre, but rather silvered along the upper registers and made him think of chimes and bells. His heart started beating again. One long intake of breath and he was able to recover his wits in time to respond.

      “Now I’m curious,” he said. “What precisely do you figure a man of God looks like?”

      “Well, now,” she said, her eyes flitting over him. “You don’t look dour enough to be a Presbyterian — there are too many laugh-lines around your eyes for that. Yet there’s a certain authority in the way you hold yourself. I’d almost think you were an Anglican, except that your cloak is so worn and dusty.” The corner of her mouth twitched as she continued. “It’s not nearly plain enough for Quaker, though, so I’d guess … Methodist?”

      This was so much like something Sarah might have said that he had to chuckle a bit in spite of the fact that it rattled him anew.

      “There, you see? Laugh-lines.”

      “Well reasoned and absolutely correct. Thaddeus Lewis.” He tipped his hat to her. “Methodist Episcopal. New to the district.”

      “I thought the Methodists were all one now?”

      “That’s what they say. It’s not what I believe.” He was not about to start a street-corner debate on the pros and cons of Methodist union, however, so he proffered an invitation instead. “I’m presiding at services on Tuesday evening. Perhaps I’ll see you there?”

      “Tuesday evening? I may come along. We’ll see.” She smiled a goodbye, and hopped over one of the mounds of frozen horse manure that littered the roadway. When she reached the other side of the street she joined a small, pale woman and a large man who had the telltale bulk of someone who earned his living at heavy labour. As she walked away, he noted that not only the group of boys she had been standing with, but all the other men on the street, as well, watched her departure.

      They had all been watching him until then. As he had ridden into the village he had marvelled at how busy everyone seemed to be. Everywhere he looked there were workmen — carpenters, bricklayers, masons. Most of the buildings they were working on were frame — appropriate for a village that had grown up around a sawmill — but here and there some ambitious citizen had decided to build in brick.

      Demorestville was an old village by Upper Canadian standards, a village founded in the first-settled townships along the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario — the “front” they called it, or sometimes the “cash.” These terms implied that life was easier here, not like it was in the clearings to the north and west where back-breaking labour had so far produced little more than tree stumps that dotted the