“It’s pleasant to see you, sir,” I said stiffly. The smell of the hot coffee beckoned me.

“I left my ‘sir’ on the other side of your door. Pardon me if I don’t get up to fetch it.” He nodded at my pot full of his coffee. “Hope you don’t mind that I extended your hospitality to myself. It’s a black, cold night out there, and a man has to take comfort where he can.” He looked around my small home. “So. It looks like you’ve done well for yourself.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant to be sarcastic or not. “It’s better than some places I’ve been,” I said guardedly.

He laughed at my cautious tone. “Never, come on in and get comfortable.

Pull up a chair, have a cup of coffee. After all, it’s your house. Your life.”

“That’s true,” I said pointedly. “Back in a moment, after I put up my horse.”

When I returned from seeing to Clove, Hitch had poured me a mug of coffee. Several apples sat on the table next to the mug. As I hung up my cloak and muffler, I asked him, “How on earth did you get apples at this time of year?”

“I’m an officer. We have access to the better supplies.” He laughed at the expression on my face. “You’re torn between ‘It’s not fair’ and ‘I should have been an officer, too, so I could have those unfair apples more often.’”

“I think both statements are true,” I said with mangled dignity.

“True has nothing to do with what is,” he said blithely. “Sit down, Never.

Drink your coffee and eat an apple. Let us discuss our lives with one another.”

“Let’s not,” I said succinctly, but I took an apple and the mug from the table and moved my chair to join him by the stove. “What really brings you to visit me?” I asked after my first sip.

“Renegade,” he said, and laughed at his own feeble joke. Then he cleared his throat. “I don’t know, Never. I just had an impulse. Do you ever get impulses like that? You suddenly feel like you ought to do a thing without knowing why?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Really?” he asked conversationally. “Let me rephrase that. Have you ever done something impulsively, and suddenly felt that your careless words or passing touch would have far greater significance than you’d intended?”

A creeping dread invaded my bones. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I see. So you never attempted to enlist at a small courier station? And as you left, you never departed with a quote from the Holy Writ? Something like, ‘As you have seen to the needs of the stranger, so may your own wants be met in your time of need?’”

I sat very still, looking at him. He smiled mirthlessly. “I range a bit.

Sometimes I go a bit beyond the scouting missions I’m sent on.

Sometimes I’ve a mission of my own. Such as when I’m sent out to set something to rights after someone else has unbalanced it.”