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The men shook hands, and retreated to the warain cocked his feet toward the fire and finally answered, "It’s hard to say They started with guns and dynamite, and neither one worked out for the o the opposite way, and reach for larger guns"

"Maybe," Gideon agreed "But I suspect that I’ve been targeted by so Brute force isn’t her style, unless she’s playing political gaht up in? A political game?"

Now that someone else said it aloud, it was silly to insist otherwise "All right, then it’s a political ga, so let’s call it a hunch and hope for the best"

Douglass said, "I’d like to think that the ‘best’ would i, happy life, with no interference fro on, Gideon? What can I do for you? It’s been … oh, six months since I saw you last Should I assume you’ve had your nose buried in that Fiddlehead project all this time?"

"Yes And the Fiddlehead is why they want er to indicate that the maid had returned with coffee for Gideon, and tea for her employer He told her to leave the tray behind, so that they could serve theone he selected two cubes of sugar, and took up the question he’d left dangling before her arrival "Nohy don’t you tell me who ‘they’ are The mysterious ‘they,’ who you’ve used a feminine pronoun to describe--so I a so"

Over the next half hour, Gideon told hi with Abraha for the Pinkertons, andto the Fiddlehead’s conclusions, Katharine Haymes, and the tenuous connection between her coood to lay it out on the table, even if the table wasn’t his own, and didn’t belong to his usual benefactor If anything, being forced to tell it all from start to finish, to someone who hadn’t heard it yet and wasn’t faave his brain rooh the particulars and see the connections better hiles, he held his still-full, now-cooled cup of coffee untouched in his right hand as he waited for a response

"I an slowly, "it sounds like a very fine mess"

"It’s not the first time people have wanted to kill lass was less firm on the matter "Perhaps you should be cowed by it, a little if not a lot And I’m not perfectly confident that they’d prefer you dead It’d be smarter to discredit you If I were you, I’d be more worried about that"

Taken aback, Gideon set his coffee down too hard It rattled, and all the small spoons quivered on the silver tray "You think I should back down? Hide? Run back to Lincoln with ives me permission to speak?"

"No one can ood reason to consider a ht now When you left Tennessee, you risked no one but yourself and your fa you’ve said about yourmuch more these days when you put yourself at risk Upon your e could rest the fate of two nations,yourself and your family, a fact I wish to underscore Let it not be said that I fruitlessly urged you on a path toward altruisive the world the fruits of , isn’t it?"

"Yes, but you don’t do so from a sense of duty You do it because you prefer an audience, and because the rant money you acquire in order to produce e the world, Gideon Bardsley Whether you give a da to save it They won’t let me save it"

"They, they, they Another ‘they’ for you to blale-minded at times Think broader Think in another direction That’s your forte, isn’t it?"

"Yes, but I don’t knohat I’ht now? No one will deign to hear n to hear you, yes--you say that like it’s the easiest thing on earth to waltz into Congress and s and called favors to put you on that podiue hiainst you But since he can’t help you the way you want, right this ainst the wall because you think your only path is blocked But it isn’t Lincoln’s right about taking ti that you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to have it heard"

Gideon’s unhappy fugue flickered, but he did not straighten up frolass sighed "Son, Congress isn’t the only stage in the nation It’s not even the largest, not by a far cry You don’t have to start there, and you don’t have to stop there, either You need the audience, as ht into the shadows, and teach people that things are being hidden The governors are buying things and paying for theainst the will--of the governed"

"Ah" He understood "You think I should go to the papers"