get some warmth into them. Still striking at himself, he returned to the victim of his kindness. “I had a coat once with fine brass buttons on it,” he said. “But the coat was stole off me back aboard ship on the false grounds that it was verminous, an’ the bosun kept me buttons though they brought him no luck. One I found again after twelve years through a blessin’ that was on me, but I gave that to a man who was dyin’. It is only justice that you should reinstate me buttons, havin’ saved you from injury or worse. If I had a knife about me I could snip them off, but lookin’ at it another way I am not the man to desecrate a fine coat … Here, hold steady.” Feeling the coat being eased off him, the man struggled up to a sitting position, glared before him for some moments, then fell back against the bank.
The coat was rather too big at the shoulders for Sullivan, a fact that surprised and puzzled him, conflicting with his sense that this encounter by the wayside was perfect in all its details of mutual benefit. “You will be a local man,” he said. “You will not have far to go. I am bound for the County of Durham, an’ that is a tidy step.” He had been unlacing the boots as he spoke. Now he raised the man’s legs to pull them off, first right, then left. The thick legs fell heavily to earth again when released. The man’s eyes were open, but they were not looking at anything. The boots fit Sullivan perfectly. He slipped his shoes on the other’s feet. “Each man will keep to his own trousers,” he said magnanimously. In fact, he had grown hasty in the lacing of his new boots, and was eager to be off. He straightened up, took his bow and fiddle and moved away into the middle of the lane. “The morning is not so cold now,” he said. “I have been your benefactor and will remember you as mine.”
No sound at all came from the man. He had slumped back against the bank. His head had fallen forward and slightly sideways, toward his left shoulder. He had the look of total meekness that the hanged possess, and perhaps it was this that brought a sudden tightness to Sullivan’s throat and made him delay some moments longer.
“At another time I would have saved your life free of charge,” he said. “You are gettin’ me off to a good start an’ I am grateful.” Still he paused, however. He had no natural propensity to theft, and there was the important question of justice. Because of him this man’s waking would be unhappy. He was owed some further explanation. “I had a shipmate,” he said. “A Durham man, name of Billy Blair. Him an’ me were close. We were pressed aboard ship together in Liverpool. She was a slaver, bound for the Guinea Coast. We took the negroes on but we niver got to Jamaica with them, we came to grief on the coast of Florida. Them that were left lived on there, black and white together. We had reasons for stayin’ where we were, but I will not occupy your time with them, as bein’ irrelevant to the point at issue. Billy sometimes talked about the place where he was born an’ about his family. He ran away to sea when he was a lad of fourteen, to get away from minin’ the coal, so he said. He was always intendin’ to go back someday, but he niver did. An’ now he niver will. I made a vow that if iver I got free of me chains an’ had power over me own feet again, I would find Billy’s folks and tell them what befell him. An’ now I am bound to it, d’ye see, I can’t go back on it because me vow was heard, the gates were opened to me.”
The hat was still lying there. He picked it up and set it firmly on the man’s lowered head. “I have spoke to you in confidence, man to man,” he said. “I am trustin’ you not to promulgate me words to any third party. An’ now I will bid you farewell.”
He walked for an hour or so in the sullen light of morning. Nothing passed him on the road and he met no one. At a junction of lanes there