She goes into John’s bedroom, lies on his bed. She can smell his muddy, smoky scent in the quilt she herself made for him. The antlers, still dripping with their weaponry, hang above her, casting shadows like bony fingers against the wall. She should get up. She should put on her riding clothes, saddle Fanny, and ride out to the cabins, get the men to go and search. But she’s too afraid of what they’ll find.

She makes it as far as John’s window. From there she has the best view in the house of the buried lane. She sees John, tamping down the snow as he comes, leading a cow and making his slow way home. She waits just long enough to be sure that he’s real, before running, sobbing, calling for Mother and Rosalie, downstairs to meet him, shoeless out into the snow.

—

It turns out that the women’s fears were not exaggerated. His escape was a narrow one. He’d walked for hours, the wind blowing into his face, snow coating his sleeves, encasing his gloves and boots, his hat and the scarf over his face until he must have looked like a snowman walking. The drifts were high. He must wade sometimes and force his way forward, never certain he hadn’t lost the road. Suddenly, chilled to the heart, he was overwhelmed with the need to sleep. It seemed like such a reasonable thing to do—rest for a bit, close his stinging eyes—that he had to deliver stern lectures to himself, saying that to sit down for even a moment would be his death. The argument in his head only stopped when, through the blur of snow, he thought he saw a light.

Fairyland, he thought, because he was just that far out of his mind, but the light turned out to be real, the Parker farm at long last. He was taken inside, so frozen he was unable at first to speak or think. Mr. Parker poured brandy down his throat and whipped him about the chest and shoulders with the flat of his hands until John came back into himself.

His plan to take the cow and leave for home immediately was forcibly overridden. While the women had been mad with fear, John had been tucked safely into a warm bed and sound asleep.