“Don’t worry after ’em, Mrs. Adams,” whispered Muldoon. “We can get the poor lady out of there right enough. All we need’s a bit of time to get ourselves ready.”

As the gray light thickened, they worked their way back to one of the broken fence-lines that crossed the light second growth of what had been fields, the sergeant marking the way by cutting saplings half through with his knife, and bending them down so that they formed a sort of chain as far as the fence. “Even if the moon’s covered, keep a hand on these,” he breathed. “It’ll lead ye’s to the fence. The fence’ll lead us to the ditch and wall round the great fields, and we can follow those to the road. ’Twill be slow going, but once at the road we can keep one foot in a rut, and thirty of my strides’ll take us to that shanty where the horses are tied.”

“I have a lantern—” It had been dragging at her belt all the afternoon.

“Agh, m’am, it won’t shine a foot before us, but’ll show us up for a mile. And, I never did go out poachin’ with a winker but that I managed to drop it and the candle fell out of it.”

“How’ll we find our way from the house to the first sapling?”

“We’ll do like that old Greek feller.” Muldoon tapped the side of his nose with an expression of wisdom. “The one that treated that poor girl so scaly: I misremember his name. But we’ll have to step pretty lively, I’m thinkin’. Night’s fallin’ fast.”

It was, in fact, about the hour that Abigail and Thaxter had entered the village before, when she and Muldoon came opposite its main crossroad again. Lights had been kindled in the House of Repentance, but—as Abigail had feared—few were going inside. Instead they lingered around its doors in the twilight, or gathered, thicker and thicker, before the big and handsome house, whose windows also began to glow. She recognized Damnation among them, by her height and by the relatively stronger color of her dress. She was one of the ones gesturing, talking, passionately it seemed, and pointing back toward the blockhouse.

“Mr. Hazlitt must have sent her away Wednesday evening, just before the town gates were shut,” Abigail whispered, now shivering in earnest as she stood beside the sergeant’s comforting bulk. “I can’t see how she could have come into town much before this morning, even with a few hours’ start on us. I don’t know where she would obtain a horse. What’s going on now?”