So with a general sense of relief and achievement the villagers went off their separate ways. Peter gave Peterkin his jar of nails and told him to put it down carefully on the shelf at the back of his workshop and then follow them home. Marion picked up Alice, who had been pottering about quietly unconcerned, and they went down to the bridge, Marion still carrying her empty basket. Down the log steps at the other side of the bridge, Peter paused and opened his big leather bag swinging at his waist. He pulled out two small earthenware jars with leather tied over their necks.

‘This is for us,’ he said. ‘Their man, Steve something – a steward, keeps the stores and stuff down there – gave me these. That one has got goose meat in it, cooked and solid, under a layer of fat, and this smaller one is full of apple that’s been boiled with honey and what he called cloves, spicy stuff. Now – oh, Peterkin, there you are – don’t go telling anyone about this. It is just for us and Sir Hugh and Ed-me-boy don’t know about it.’ It was almost too dark to see Peterkin’s eyes, bright with expectation.

‘Got currants in it?’ he asked.

‘Don’t think so. Could have. Got some good bread, Marion?’

‘Yes – some,’ said Marion, wishing that the bits of hard bread she had had that morning had been fresher and more plentiful.

‘We’ll have this goose pot for our supper,’ said Peter. ‘Yes, a bit for you too, Alice. We must finish it; once you scratch off the grease it won’t keep.’

‘Can we keep the pots?’ asked Marion.

‘Yes, of course, no one else knows about them. They’re only small, don’t hold much.’

‘Any pots are useful. Why did you tell me to bring a basket?’ Marion thought of all those blackberries tipped out on the shelf unnecessarily.

‘I thought Sir Hugh’d start dividing up salt at once.’

In the dusk, as they walked along the Common path, they could see Lisa and Martin, also returning, some hundred yards ahead of them. Marion remarked to Peter on their presence.

‘I could see something,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t see who it was. I did think when I was in Rutherford that perhaps I saw more than I used to see. Perhaps their air is clearer than ours. Still, it does seem strange it’s not Dick and Hilda there.’

Yes, indeed, strange, and terrible. Marion had temporarily forgotten, in her happiness at Peter’s successful journey, the misery that Hilda must still be in, somewhere in the crowded indifference of life in the Hall. Marion felt that now she regarded Dick in a different way to how she had while he lived. He had, she now felt, deceived them all with his appearance of strength when all the time he had carried death concealed in him. Her rationality told her that they all equally carried death with them but – suddenly her heart exulted – she was still alive, Peter was still alive, and he had been returned to her from that fearful hostile world of Rutherford. Then, again suddenly, Marion remembered Dick’s dying face, eyes shut, mouth open and tortured, his orange hair and beard matted, and that huge swollen purple and yellow arm lying across his body and her memory rebuked her exultation.