The morning passed peacefully. Breakfast eaten and cleared away, Amy, Bree, and I settled down by the fire with an enormous heap of mending. Adso, tail still twitching with indignation, had taken up a place on a high shelf, from whence he glared at Rollo, who had taken over the trundle bed when the boys got out of it.

Aidan and Jemmy, each now the proud possessor of two vrooms, drove them over hearthstones, under the bed, and through our feet, but for the most part, refrained from punching each other or stepping on Orrie, who was sitting placidly under the table gnawing on a piece of toast. Jamie, Roger, and Ian took turns going outside to pace back and forth and stare at the Big House, deserted in the shelter of the snow-dusted spruce.

As Roger came back from one of these expeditions, Brianna looked up suddenly from the sock she was darning.

“What?” he said, seeing her face.

“Oh.” She had paused, needle halfway through the sock, and now looked down, completing her stitch. “Nothing. Just a—just a thought.”

The tone of her voice made Jamie, who had been frowning his way through a battered copy of Evelina, look up.

“What sort of thought was that, a nighean?” he asked, his radar quite as good as Roger’s.

“Er … well.” She bit her lower lip, but then blurted, “What if it’s this house?”

That froze everyone except the little boys, who continued crawling industriously around the room and over bed and table, screeching and vrooming.

“It could be, couldn’t it?” Bree looked round, from rooftree to hearth. “All the—the prophecy said”—with an awkward nod toward Amy McCallum—“was the home of James Fraser would burn. But this was your home, to start with. And it’s not like there’s a street address. It just said, On Fraser’s Ridge.”

Everyone stared at her, and she flushed deeply, dropping her eyes to the sock.

“I mean … it’s not like they—er, prophecies—like they’re always accurate, is it? They might have got the details wrong.”

Amy nodded seriously; evidently, vagueness in the matter of detail was an accepted characteristic of prophecies.

Roger cleared his throat explosively; Jamie and Ian exchanged glances, then looked at the fire, leaping on the hearth and the towering stack of bone-dry firewood next to it, the overflowing kindling basket … Everyone’s eyes turned expectantly to Jamie, whose face was a study in conflicting emotions.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “we could remove to Arch’s place.”

I began to count on my fingers: “You, me, Roger, Bree, Ian, Amy, Aidan, Orrie, Jemmy—plus Mr. and Mrs. Bug—is eleven people. In a one-room cabin that measures eight feet by ten?” I closed my fists and stared at him. “No one would have to set the place on fire; half of us would be sitting in the hearth already, well alight.”

“Mmphm. Well, then … the Christie place is empty.”

Amy’s eyes went round with horror, and everyone looked automatically away from everyone else. Jamie took a deep breath and let it out, audibly.

“Perhaps we’ll just be … very careful,” I suggested. Everyone exhaled slightly, and we resumed our occupations, though without our former sense of snug safety.

Dinner passed without incident, but in midafternoon, a knock came on the door. Amy screamed, and Brianna dropped the shirt she was mending into the fire. Ian leaped to his feet and jerked the door open, and Rollo, jerked out of a doze, charged past him, roaring.

Jamie and Roger struck the doorway—and each other—simultaneously, stuck for an instant, and fell through. All the little boys shrieked and ran to their respective mothers, who were frantically beating at the smoldering shirt as though it were a live snake.

I had leaped to my feet, but was pressed against the wall, unable to get past Bree and Amy. Adso, startled by the racket and by my popping up beside him, hissed and took a swipe at me, narrowly missing my eye.

A number of oaths in a mixture of languages were coming from the dooryard, accompanied by a series of sharp barks from Rollo. Everyone sounded thoroughly annoyed, but there were no sounds of conflict. I edged my way delicately past the knot of mothers and sons, and peered out.

Major MacDonald, wet to the eyebrows and covered in clumps of snow and dirty slush, was gesticulating with some energy at Jamie, while Ian rebuked Rollo, and Roger—from the look on his face—was trying very hard not to burst out laughing.

Jamie, compelled by his own sense of propriety, but eyeing the Major with deep suspicion, invited him in. The inside of the cabin smelled of burned fabric, but at least the riot had calmed down, and the Major greeted us all with a fair assumption of cordiality. There was a lot of fuss, getting him stripped of his soaking-wet clothes, dried off, and—for lack of any better alternative—temporarily swathed in Roger’s spare shirt and breeches, in which he appeared to be drowning, as he was a good six inches shorter than Roger.

Food and whisky having been ceremonially offered and accepted, the household fixed the Major with a collective eye and waited to hear what had brought him to the mountains in the dead of winter.

Jamie exchanged a brief glance with me, indicating that he could hazard a guess. So could I.

“I have come, sir,” MacDonald said formally, hitching up the shirt to keep it from sliding off his shoulder, “to offer ye command of a company of militia, under the orders of General Hugh MacDonald. The General’s troops are gathering, even as we speak, and will undertake their march to Wilmington at the end of the month.”

I felt a deep qualm of apprehension at that. I was accustomed to MacDonald’s chronic optimism and tendency to overstatement, but there was nothing of exaggeration in this statement. Did that mean that the help Governor Martin had requested, the troops from Ireland, would be landing soon, to meet General MacDonald’s troops at the coast?

“The General’s troops,” Jamie said, poking up the fire. He and MacDonald had taken over the fireside, with Roger and Ian ranged on either side of them, like firedogs. Bree, Amy, and I repaired to the bed, where we perched like a row of roosting hens, watching the conversation with a mingling of interest and alarm, while the little boys retired under the table.

“How many men does he have, would ye say, Donald?”

I saw MacDonald hesitate, torn between truth and desire. He coughed, though, and said matter-of-factly, “He had a few more than a thousand when I left him. Ye ken weel, though—once we begin to move, others will come to join us. Many others. The more particularly,” he added pointedly, “if such gentlemen as yourself are in command.”

Jamie didn’t reply to that at once. Meditatively, he shoved a burning wood fragment back into the fire with his foot.

“Powder and shot?” he asked. “Arms?”

“Aye, well; we’d a bit of a disappointment there.” MacDonald took a sip of his whisky. “Duncan Innes had promised us a great deal in that way—but in the end, he was obliged to renege upon his promise.” The Major’s lips pressed tight, and I thought from the expression on his face that perhaps Duncan had not been overreacting in his decision to move to Canada.

“Still,” MacDonald continued more cheerfully, “we are not destitute in that regard. And those gallant gentlemen who have flocked to our cause—and who will come to join us—bring with them both their own weapons and their courage. You, of all people, must appreciate the force of the Hieland charge!”

Jamie looked up at that, and regarded MacDonald for a long moment before replying.

“Aye, well. Ye were behind the cannon at Culloden, Donald. I was in front of them. With a sword in my hand.” He took up his own glass and drained it, then got up and moved to pour another, leaving MacDonald to recover his countenance.

“Touché, Major,” Brianna murmured under her breath. I didn’t think Jamie had ever before referred to the fact that the Major had fought with the government forces during the Rising—but I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t forgotten.