“You don’t seem a man who will do as he’s told.” When Samuel shook his head, Finney went on. “I’m asking you to go after them, and that cancels out what she told you. I’m asking on Faith’s behalf. She thinks I’m the one who saved her, but she’s got it all wrong. I was a dead man when I found her in the flatlands. My life was over and done with. She’s the one who saved me.”

Samuel thought this over after Finney had left. He was a man who enjoyed a good argument, but he was humble as well, and could admit when he’d made a mistake. He thought perhaps the Cornishman had been right. Samuel had saved Maria’s life on her hanging day, so perhaps he was not the only one with a debt to pay. Perhaps they owed their loyalty to one another.

He sat in the garden until dark, when a chill sifted into the soft spring air, then he went inside, still trying to make his decision. It had been a long time since he’d been home, and though the house was empty and dim, it was still so familiar it was as if he’d been here only days before. There was a lantern on the table and he took out the small brass tinderbox that he carried to strike a light. He sat hunched in his black coat. He could have started a fire in the fireplace or gone upstairs to sleep, but he spied a letter on the table, his name on the envelope that had been sealed with red wax. Samuel knew the script, those perfect black letters. Perhaps the sight had allowed her to see that he would come back. He took his knife and slit open the envelope.

We do things when we’re young that we regret. I believed that love was my enemy, but I was wrong.

He folded the letter into his coat and made certain to lock the door when he left. It took less than two hours to get together a crew willing to sail to Salem, for there was no cargo and the lighter the ship the faster the journey. He was in a hurry, that much was true.

He recalled the woman who had given him directions to the jail and went to her house straightaway. Anne Hatch spied him through the window and opened the door, beckoning him to come up the stairs. “I remember you. The man with the tree.”

As she had years ago, when he first arrived in Salem, she fetched him a plate of chicken stew. He thanked her and ate, ravenous, and when he was finished he told her he had come for Maria once again.

“If she ever did come back here I figure she’d go out to that house she had,” Anne said.