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day is theirs to use as they wish, the world wide open to them to explore or ignore as they see fit.
    Eliot shakes his head. He has no reason to feel ashamed of such thoughts, has he? There are men who would run from the duties that he accepts without complaint. He sees these fugitives every day on the streets of Boston, nameless men at easels mixing watery paints with bristly nubbins, skinny young men outside dark-windowed taverns, writing on scraps of paper, muttering in rhyme, veterans of forgotten jobs strung together to support their stubborn devotion to fiddle or flute, penniless old men who refuse to abandon the fruitless dreams of their youth. Yet sometimes, beneath his contempt, Eliot wonders how it would be to switch places with one of them for a day, to be a man whose sole purpose in rising from bed was to make manifest the airy shapes that populated his imagination.
    And that is the real reason for his coming to Concord, is it not? If all goes as planned, the additional income from the new bookshop will afford him that which he covets most of all:
time
. He pulls a card from his coat pocket and checks the name of the man he has come to meet. It distresses him to think that his lot could be bound to such a person, but the world is indeed a vast stage with a great variety of players. In business, such liaisons are regrettable but necessary. If his new bookshop succeeds, he will hire another clerk. As the owner of two bookstores, he could not possibly be expected to involve himself in the daily details of receipts and ledgers, and he might even give over management of both shops to a trusted employee for one, or two, or even three days a week.
Three days
in which to sit and work on his plays! Given such a luxury, surely he might at last finish his most recent play,
The House of Many Windows
. The manager of the Boston Museum, Moses Kimball, has all but agreed to produce it and has encouraged Eliot to complete the manuscript, but Eliot thus farhas found himself at an impasse. He needs time to revise. And there are financial matters to consider: the play will conclude with a great conflagration, an unheard-of and expensive spectacle. In the third act, an entire house will be burned to the ground, right before the audience. Moses Kimball made the suggestion himself, but there remains the question of cost. There is always the question of cost.
    If his new business venture proves profitable, Eliot will finance
The House of Many Windows
himself; he might even rent an apartment with an inspiring view of the new Public Gardens, where he can sit alone with his notebooks. Eliot has not mentioned this part of his plan to Margaret. She would likely voice opposition— but what of it? He should not need to have her approval. He knows of other men who secretly rent rooms at midday for far more ignoble endeavors.
    Eliot reaches the empty storefront on Main Street, where, as the agent informed him, the previous owner worked doggedly until the day he met with an untimely accident. Eliot takes another deep breath of the crisp air. The smell he detected back on the turnpike has grown stronger, as if all Concord's residents conspired to pack their stoves with green wood today. Eliot steps back from the empty storefront and imagines his name hanging from the signpost; he thinks again of the watch fob bearing the same inscription. He studies the windows, the red door, the peeling paint and broken glass, and then he looks up to the roofline and raises an eyebrow. In the distance, a thick finger of smoke floats ominously into the perfect blue sky.

4

Caleb

    They will think the light is for them.
    The Reverend Caleb Ephraim Dowdy sees the miraculous light in the woods before the others do. He sees the beginnings of it, as if time slowed for him alone so that he might mark the infinitesimal motions of things in the open field around them: a beating insect wing, a budding plant, the lengthening of an eyelash, the eruption of a match head. He