In which we are introduced to the ancient and weather-beaten Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, a riverside public-house presided over with firm kindness by Miss Abbey Potterson, whose sharp eyes and commanding presence impose order among her motley assemblage of patrons. Within this stronghold, social tensions and dark suspicions are aired, as a young woman named Lizzie faces the painful burden of her father’s troubling reputation, leading to a quiet, resolute farewell to her brother and a forbidding shadow cast upon the family’s future.