They got out of that field and into the Edgley house somehow, crawled along together and when they got to the house they did not light a lamp or anything but sat on the floor of May’s room hand in hand, talking in low quiet tones. After a long time, perhaps an hour, May’s father came home. He had got out of the field and had wandered on a country road and as he went along he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. That was the black following the wrong man and it’s a wonder he didn’t kill John Edgley. What happened was that the drayman began to run and got into a grove of trees and there lost his pursuer. Then he took off his shoes and managed to find his way home barefooted. The black having followed the wrong man turned out to be a good thing. The man up in May’s room was free, for the first time in more than two years, he was free. It had turned out that the man was quite badly injured, the black having, in his excitement, aimed a blow at his head that would have done for him had it struck fair. However, the blow glanced off and only bruised his head and made it bleed and as he sat in the darkness on the floor in May’s room with his hand in hers, telling her his story, the blood kept dropping thump, thump, on the floor. May had thought, at the time, it was water falling from her hair. It just went to show what a man he was, afraid of nothing, enduring everything without a murmur. Later he was sick with a fever for weeks and May never left his room, but gradually nursed him back to health and strength, and no one in Bidwell had ever known of his presence in the house. Later he left town at night, on a dark night when, to save yourself, you couldn’t see your hand before your face. As to the man’s story—it had never been told to anyone and if May told it to Maud Welliver it was because she had to have at least one friend who knew all. Even her father, who had risked his life, did not know.