VII
The long winter night was unrelieved by any hint of dawn when Justin scrambled through a hurriedly-opened window, dropped to the gently slanting roof of a one-storey shed attached to the Wilkins house and slid safely into a deep pile of snow.
Working his way clear to the rutted icy alley that passed for a street, Justin's chief impression was not wonder at the miracle that had actually transported him backward through time into the Old Boston of his dreams. It was a combination of uncertainty, befuddlement and utter physical discomfort.
In the first place the cast-off clothing of her father that Deborah had managed to procure for him from an upstairs hall closet was extremely uncomfortable. Made of coarse homespun it felt like steel wool against his skin. There was no underwear to ease the contact, nor had Deborah thought of any.
A chill east wind from the Bay knifed up the alley and chilled the marrow in his bones. Bitterly he recalled that the climate of north-eastern America had been growing steadily warmer for more than a century in his own time. He had returned to the very depths of the cold era.
Nor was he used to strange and narrow streets, slippery with ice, littered with refuse and utterly without lights. Holding with one hand to the cocked hat Deborah had loaned him, he groped his way with the other stretched out before him.
From the Wilkins house he was to proceed east on Mills Street, past Arch Street, until he came to Long Lane. There he was to turn right until he reached, on the corner to his left, a house, a full storey higher than the structures around it. He was to rap the knocker until a Mrs. Cooper answered and tell her that Sam Wilkins had sent him.
The small "hoard" Deborah had given him clinked in the cloth pouch she had tied round his waist. In spite of his discomfort he felt his thoughts soften at her generosity, as well as at its pitiful smallness. She was, in truth, a lovely thing to happen to any man.
He found the house and banged the heavy brass doorknocker with congealing fingers. After awhile a faint light glimmered through the fan-glass above the door, to be followed by the metallic sounds of a bolt being thrust back. The door opened a crotch and, above a wavering candle, a long-chinned toothless crone peered out at him and said, "What devil's business brings ye to my door at this heathen hour?"