"All right, all right," Sandburg said. "But what are you going to do, moon about this woman the rest of your life? When you have grandchildren, you can talk about her the way fishermen go on: the one that got away. You're probably better off, you know. You're almost sure to be better off."

"Yeah, I know," Moss said. "I've been telling myself the same thing ever since I got back to the States. Trouble is, I can't make myself believe it."

"What are you going to do, then? Head back up to wherever it was in Canada you said she lived?" Sandburg shook his head. "That sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go through to have some girl tell you to go to hell twice." He glanced over toward the waitress, a pert brunette. "She'll probably tell you to go to hell right here. And if she doesn't, what does this Canuck gal have that she's missing? They're all the same when the lamp goes out."

"I never thought so," Moss said. He'd never thought of going back to Arthur, Ontario, again, either, not seriously. In musing tones, he went on, "Maybe I should. I'd get her out of my system, anyhow."

"That's the spirit." Sandburg raised his coffee mug in salute. "The hell with courses. The hell with examinations. If you can only see this woman who hates your guts one more time, you'll die happy. I expect they'll make a moving picture about it, and every organ player in the country can milk the minor chords for all they're worth."

"Oh, shut up," Moss said. But the more his friend ridiculed the idea, the more it appealed to him. If he felt like going up to Ontario, he could do that, provided the occupation authorities didn't give him any trouble. Had he not come from a family with money, he wouldn't have been studying law at Northwestern in the first place. Leaving for a semester wouldn't be hard.

He wondered what his parents would say. Variations on the theme of You 're out of your mind occurred to him. Maybe he'd be wiser just to tell them he was going up to visit someone he'd met during the war, without going into too many details. They might think he meant an Army buddy. He'd have a lot less to explain afterwards if he came home unsuccessful.

He was not a fool. I'm not a fool except about this, he thought. No matter how foolish he was when he thought about Laura Secord, he understood the odds weren't in his favor. The odds weren't always in his favor when he played poker, either. Of course, he generally lost money when he played poker, which meant he didn't play it very often.

"Come on," Sandburg said after a look at his pocket watch. "We've got Bricker's lecture on courtroom defense and cross-examination tactics to go to, and he's worth listening to. Besides, he hasn't lost a case in years, and if that doesn't prove he knows what he's talking about, I don't know what would."

Moss laid a quarter on the table to cover his two cups of coffee. The waitress brought back fifteen cents' change; he left her a nickel tip. As he was heading out the door, he said, "I'm glad we're not down at Clemson or one of those other Confederate universities. If we were, we'd be paying five bucks for coffee, not five cents."

"Yeah, but we'd be somewhere close to millionaires-in Confederate dollars, anyhow," Fred Sandburg said. He shook his head. "Before the war, their dollar was at par with ours. God only knows when it will be again."

"They're giving us their specie and letting the printing presses run for themselves," Moss said. "You let that go on for a while and pretty soon you take five pounds of bills to the grocery store and trade 'em for five pounds of beans."

"Either that or the bills start getting crowded on account of all the extra zeros they have to put on each one," Sandburg agreed. He checked his watch again. "Come on. Shake a leg. We're going to be late "

By shaking a leg, they got to Swift Hall on time. Moss liked the campus, with its buildings scattered among emerald-green lawns and the deeper tone of trees. Lake Michigan beyond could almost have been the sea.

As Fred Sandburg had said, Professor Bricker was an impressive lecturer. Not only was he a strikingly handsome man, with broad shoulders and a thick head of black hair, he also had a deep and musical voice and a presence an actor might have envied. Moss could see how juries would believe anything he said; no wonder he'd been a burr under the saddle of local district attorneys for years.

And yet, however fine a lecturer Bricker was, Jonathan Moss had trouble paying attention to him today. His thoughts kept wandering up to Canada, wondering what Laura Secord was doing, wondering what she would say when she saw him again.

He would find out. No doubt that was stupid. He recognized as much. But he was sure-almost sure-he'd do it anyway.

Anne Colleton's broker looked like the very unhappy man he was. "It was good of you to come up to Columbia when I asked," he said. "I do appreciate it, believe me. I wanted to tell you in person that, as of August first, I shall no longer be able to represent you."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Whitson," Anne said, not altogether truthfully. "Are you retiring altogether from your profession?" Whitson was not a young man, but not so old as that, either.

"Yes, and not voluntarily," he answered, his voice bitter. "As of that date, I shall be declaring bankruptcy to protect myself from my creditors. I doubt very much whether you or anyone else would have any use for a bankrupt broker."

"I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune." But Anne could not resist getting in a shot of her own: "You might have done better if you'd invested along the lines I chose-the lines about which you had some unkind things to say when I presented them to you."

"Go ahead-rub it in," Whitson muttered. Anne did not dislike him enough to do any more gloating, so she pretended not to hear. He went on, "I must admit, your ideas proved sounder than mine. I am, as I say, bankrupt, with holdings in worthless stocks. Your financial position is not as it was before the war-"

"Whose is, in the Confederate States?" Anne asked harshly.

"Not many folks', I'll tell you that," the broker said. "But you are merely poorer than you were. In the CSA, and especially here in South Carolina, that's an impressive accomplishment. Most plantation owners have long since gone belly up. You're still in the fight"

"Who else is?" Anne asked, interested in the competition.

"Importers," Whitson answered. "Steel men. Petroleum men in Texas and Louisiana-they're thriving, because Sequoyah's gone. Some of the Sonoran copper kings: the ones whose mines the Yankees didn't reach. But anybody who grew anything with Negro labor-cotton, tobacco, rice, sugarcane, indigo-has troubles the way a stray dog has fleas."

"Can't trust 'em, not any more," Anne said. "That's never going to be the same again. That's why I've still got Marshlands like a millstone around my neck. Who would want the place now? What would anyone do with it if he bought it?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Whitson said, "but I don't know what that proves, either." His mouth tightened to a thin, pale line. "The ideas I have had haven't been good ones."

"The whole country is having a rough time," Anne said with more sympathy than she'd thought she would show. "It's hard for anyone to prosper. We need to put some heart back into ourselves, but I don't know how."

"This inflation is eating us out of house and home," the broker said. "Before long, everybody will be a millionaire and everybody will be broke."

/ told you so trembled on the edge of being spoken, but Anne held her tongue. She had told Whitson so, and he hadn't listened, and now he was paying the price. Because she'd converted her holdings into currencies that still meant something in terms of gold, she'd come through pretty well. When the upturn finally arrived, she would be rich again-if she could wait long enough.