They went into the woods and to the creek, following no path but picking a way that brought them in a straight short line to the water. They came out just where Floyd had set his first line the evening before, when he had wanted to get away from the dancing and drinking and general celebration that continued long into the night. There would be no further call on him that night, he knew, for all the wedding guests had gone, except Felix and Nell Kendrick, who were to stay on for a few days so that Nell might, as she said, regain a little strength after all the physical and emotional exertion she had endured.

There was nothing on the first line. When Floyd drew it up, they saw that all but a small bit of bait, that just around the hook, had been nibbled away during the night.

They looked at each other briefly and smiled. “Smart old catfish, bet you,” Ezra said. “Like he was taunting us.”

Floyd dropped the line back into the water. He would reset it tonight, perhaps moving it along the bank to another location. The next two lines each yielded a catfish, and Floyd removed them from the hooks carefully to avoid their spiky fins.

“Be good for breakfast,” Ezra said.

After they followed a bend in the course of the water, they stopped stock-still, not knowing at first what it was they saw, then knowing and hurrying toward her, for it was Selma. She had apparently gone to sleep with her head against the log that rested one end on the sandy bank and the other on the sloping muddy bottom of the creek.

Her dress, what was left of it, was rags. Her feet were bare, their tops and her ankles crisscrossed with blood scratches. Her bosom was uncovered and bruised, as were her upper arms. Her hair was a tangle, her face white as death. They feared that she was indeed dead, but when Ezra dropped the fish he carried and knelt beside her and touched her flesh, he nodded his head, and then gingerly, with both hands, lifted her to a sitting position, whereupon she opened her eyes.

For a few seconds her eyes and mouth were wide, as in a silent scream, until she seemed to remember or to see and comprehend where she was. Then she made clear that she recognized him. As she had many times when a little girl tired from her wanderings over the plantation, she now said, “Take me home, Ezra,” and closed her eyes as she said it.

Floyd picked her up in his arms, and Ezra led the way to a main path that was wide enough so that the foliage would not slap their sides as they made their way. They went quickly, Ezra ahead, Floyd carrying the girl in a sometimes clumsy and stumbling run, until they came back to the kitchen door of the cabin.