9

M. Lafontaine is able to pay you no more than twenty percent of what he owes you in coin, but you accept it anyway.

You watch as M. Lafontaine leads Alpheus away. Neither of them looks back.

Your encounter with M. Lafontaine is not the only surprise of the year. In later decades, 1816 will be known as the Year Without a Summer, as foul weather and a red mist blanket the northeastern United States. Snow continues to fall intermittently until June throughout the region.

Those New Englanders that can strike out for land on the far side of the Appalachians, where the bizarre weather does not seem to reach. So many colonists relocate that Indiana is able to apply for statehood that winter, and Illinois will do the same two years later.

This is a sign. The earth itself rejects our kind.

If New England is in need of food, let us endeavor to sell it to them.

As long as the weather does not immiserate the population of New-Orleans, I do not concern myself with these events.

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