The goblin was saying, repeatedly: “Come out. Go ahead. Walk careful, or I’ll shoot.” Feet sliding closer. The voice cried, “And don’t try to scrootch down in that hole…” There were three figures, fumbling and sodden, scourged by the rusty shaft of lantern light. Once more the old man lifted his voice: he was John Burns. “Who’s that there? Stop, so’s I can look at these fellows.”

Bale waited. Three hunched shapes stepped up on the wet bricks. The lantern swung close to Dan’s face. “Oh,” Burns said, and Bale could not analyze his tone or sense what disapproval was there. “Hold this light for me, Mister Bale. I got two prisoners.”

One of them said, “Wawl never teched nothin’—”

“Jest a-restin’, seh. A-restin’ from the rain.”

“I was pretty sure I heard somebody in that old smokehouse behind Peiffers’.” This was an honest duty which Burns was doing; he did not gloat, but there was a metal of reclaimed pride about him. “Hold still, you.” He jerked at the slide of the lantern.

Bilious skin, boys who had been very weary for days at a time; they looked as if their thin faces had been twisted from cheek to chin by some vicious sculptor. Both were hatless; one wore a homespun shirt with no collar, and the other had a Zouave’s jacket from which the buttons were gone. “Stragglers, I’ll be bound,” John Burns announced. He held a revolver in his left hand.

“They’re not over fifteen,” Bale said to him.

The old man growled, “I wasn’t much more’n that when I fit the British. Come along, the two of you. I’m going to lock you up.” He took the lantern from Bale and herded his prisoners away toward the Diamond. Someone yelled from the hotel porch, “What’s goin’ on over there?” The constable grunted, “Got two stragglers,” but they could not have heard him over at the hotel. Then he seemed to ask the two Confederate boys a question; Dan caught the word, “Hungry,” and there was a quick mutter of soft voices. Lantern beams bobbing, they splashed away through the mud … He will feed them at once, Bale thought. He will go to great inconvenience to find food for them; he will tramp back and forth in the rain, carrying things; all the time, he will threaten them with his revolver. The roof of the jail will lie between them and the rain. Let them thank whatever fortune they know, for this imprisonment.

And long before he reached his dark house, he was aware that his fear of the vacant lot between two buildings, the memory he held of fleeing past, the recaptured sense of whispering demons who herded in their stealth—all were forever muted and brushed over by this later hour. He would see Burns’ rusty lantern swaying in dreams for years to come, no matter what else came to happen.