After delivering Melody Page’s baby, Martha Ballard walks home across the frozen Kennebec, exhausted from the birth and from her clashes with Dr. Page and Mrs. Hendricks. On reaching the far bank, Martha notices that Samuel Coleman’s store is still lit far later than usual and stops in before going to collect her horse.

Inside, Samuel Coleman explains that he is staying late to review his accounts because the work is becoming harder for him. Martha first checks the furs on display, relieved not to see the silver fox pelt she has feared might appear there, and questions Coleman about whether he would buy such a skin. Coleman says he would refuse if it mattered to Martha, recognizing that her real purpose is something else.

Martha then asks about Sarah White. Coleman briefly mistakes Martha’s meaning, thinking she is proposing Sarah as a wife, but Martha clarifies that she hopes he might hire Sarah as help in the shop, especially since he has previously mentioned needing a boy to work the counter and keep the books. Coleman is amused but tells Martha that her suggestion has come too late because he accepted an offer on the store from a man in Boston the day before and expects the sale to be completed next month.

Disappointed to lose this chance for Sarah, Martha turns the conversation toward Coleman’s missing eye and fingers, finally asking how he was injured. Coleman says he was maimed at the Battle of Signal Hill after surviving seven years of war. He calls himself lucky compared with men who died, then adds that Joseph North also fought in the war but lost something worse than body parts: his soul.

When Martha presses him, Coleman tells her about his young wife, whose bright copper hair was cut from her head by a Huron warrior and sold as proof of an English death. This leads him to speak bluntly about the scalp trade on both sides of the war and to explain that the English paid bounties for Native scalps, with men’s scalps worth more than women’s. Coleman says Joseph North made his fortune through that trade, built his grand house from it, and became the man who now lends money in Hallowell, revealing a darker and more brutal source of North’s wealth.