When Hephaestus and Lloyd were not at the agreed meeting point, she too went searching the adjacent streets and, following the commotion of a carriage accident, got lost for a time amid the dust heaps and sale yards, where it was lucky she did not get jumped. Or worse. While she could pass for white most of the time in Ohio, St. Louis was a more sensitive, volatile environment. She sensed that, but concerns about her menfolk made her bolder than she should have been.

So it was well after the professor had gathered a crowd and performed his magic show with the help of Mrs. Mulrooneys 1 and 2 (who were, of course, thought by the spectators to be the same woman) that the Sitturd family was finally reunited. And the mood was not pleasant when Hephaestus confessed what had happened to the money-or, rather, what he did not know had happened.

“How could you?” snapped Lloyd, thinking back to how hard he had to work and scheme to make it and, even worse, how honorably the rogue St. Ives had treated him, always dividing the money on equal terms. He was so put out and let down, in a way, he wished the gambler had been his father. However wounded he might have been, he was at least a man with backbone and cunning-and style-and knowledge of the world. Lloyd knew from having prowled the market himself just what had happened-and he knew that it would have been a very sorry sneak thief to have attempted such with St. Ives.

“I-I’m sorry,” Hephaestus whimpered. For the first time, Lloyd felt a cold and pure disdain for his father, which was made even worse, for it brought with it a premonitory fear of further dissolution and foolishness. I am too young to be made to lead this family, Lloyd thought. But what other choice is there if this is to happen?

They took shelter in the rodent-busy stable, with the smell of the glue boiler mingling with the smoky red grease lamps down in the street, and the collard greens and charred pigs’ feet rising up from the shacks and shantyboats.