Solomon Seney asks little: the same status in his family that his older brother Jonathan enjoys, a pretty girl to wed, adventure on the frontier, and escape from the most horrible nemesis a man ever encountered. "MacDuff headed for the Seney plantation, pulling his cloak closer to his body and looking hard at the hell-smoked sky, the moon nowhere in sight. Blizzards were something MacDuff knew all about, but this weather was foreign to him. The wind blew as if fulfilling the wrath of God. Rain pelted his face, giving it a washing like it never had, only it dangled in his beard, holding the water against his face and making him shiver with cold. He wished for an umbrella, but the wind would jerk it away and fling it into the skies, taking him with it. He was little more than skin and bones, or feathers and bones, for he now looked so much like a huge bird of prey that sometimes he frightened children. Even dogs ran from him.