It was a strange feeling, Ebenezer thought as he took his leave of her, being married. It was not a notion he'd had yesterday afternoon nor any afternoon for some time! Always he had been... otherwise occupied, with no time to dedicate to even the consideration of what married life might be like for him. And now, in that short time span between midnight and noon, he was wed to a beautiful young woman that he knew absolutely nothing about! She and her family had arrived some time after he had been sent abroad, he thought. He'd been born in the early days of the town and had a good notion of which families had and had not been about at the time. That was all. He had literally just married as complete a stranger as was possible. Still... the marriage would help protect her; he did not think of himself as a bad man by any means, merely a man caught up in circumstances beyond his control. Was he wrong to force her into this match? Not when it would reap such benefits for both of them? And who was to say that, in their Calvanistic influenced views, Ebenezer and Mirabella might not find this was all to God's plan anyway.

He shook his head sadly as he walked. He was rationalizing again, he knew. Lapsarianism, as popular as it was with many of the town, was not a view he agreed with anyway. Ebenezer had sinned and as such was so condemned. That did not mean he had to be a monster.

"Goodman Stone!" Simon Kuyper hailed the preacher's son as he approached the smithy. Setting down hammer upon the anvil, the burly man bulked his way over to Ebenezer while wiping his hands on the scorched leather apron. The man was all beard and smiles. "God keep you, sir!"

Ebenezer nodded solemnly in turn. "And you, sir! I bring the payment, as I promised. Might we settle the matter between you and my father?"

The blacksmith nodded in turn. "By all means. Your father is the best of men. Always has been. I'll be glad to have this debt settled for him!" And Ebenezer knew why: of all the debts, the debt to Simon was the largest. Ebenezer had been paying things off bit by bit since he arrival, and now this final payment would put all to rest. After handing the tradesman the leather purse, Ebenezer waited patiently for him to count it and write him a receipt. Mirabella being alone in the house with Enoch as large was not a comforting thought! Schooling himself to patience, he gazed up at the clouds overhead in the azure sky when Simon's started cry caught his attention.

"Is there something wrong, Goodman?"

"No, not at all, Goodman Stone." The smith had pulled one of the coins out and was holding it up to the light. "There's a few Spanish escudos in here! Wherever did you get these?"

[i]Blast and damnation! [/i] Ebenezer thought in a mad panic. [i]I thought I had sorted those all out![/i] "On the Continent, I was sometimes paid for my assistances and duties to my tutors in whatever coin was at hand. My honored father was kind enough to produce some change for me when I returned and must not have had time to exchange them yet."

The smith still held the coin up to the light for a little longer than Ebenezer would have liked before finally shrugging and tossing it back into the leather purse. "I'll have to make change-"

"No, no," Ebenezer insisted smoothly. "I know this debt has been some time in the paying. Take it then in interest and in gratitude!"

It took some time longer to convince the smith that more than the approved 5% interest was still acceptable and that if he felt any shame or guilt in it, he could always gift it to the poor. Still it was nervous heart that Ebenezer made his way home. He would have to be more careful in the future; Simon Kuyper was not the smartest of men, and not all would be fooled by such a quick explanation as to how Spanish coin ended up in the purse of a man who was supposed to have been in the Netherlands.

***

Enoch's fist pounded heavily on the door to Reverend Stone's house. "Open the door! Open it, I say, or it will be all the worse for you, Mirabella!" That hammock of a hand struck the wood again, shaking the thick bar in its sockets. "At least come to talk to me! You can do that much, can't you, woman?"

Striking the door's frame now, the whole of the wooden planking vibrated from the sheer force of the blows. "Mirabella, come to this door now!"