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"All right, all right! I'm gratified you've returned! Now where's Slaughter?" "And speak up!" Nack added, to which Lillehorne shot him a warning glance.

"I'm actually very glad you're here, to witness the transfer." Matthew motioned toward the ship on its moorings at wharf number nine. "I understand," he said, "that the Golden Eye is the next vessel sailing for England. Come with me, won't you?" He started for it, and heard the clack of Lillehorne's boots following.

"What game are you playing at, Corbett? Don't you realize that John Drake, the Crown's constable, has been staying at the Dock House Inn for nearly three weeks? And who do you think is shouldering that cost? New York, that's who!"

Matthew waited for a couple of men to pass lugging a huge trunk, and then he went up the gangplank. Lillehorne was right behind him. Matthew stopped at the end of the plank. He opened the canvas bag, uptilted it, and upon the deck fell two polished black boots, somewhat scuffed in their tumble down a roof.

Lillehorne looked at the boots and then, incredulously, at Matthew. "Are you absolutely mad?"

"I seem to remember, sir, that you said in our office, 'I want the prisoner's boots on the next ship leaving for England, and good riddance to him'. Isn't that what you said?"

"I don't know! I don't remember! But if I said that, I meant for him to be in the boots! And these could be any boots you found between here and wherever you went. Now I know what happened to Greathouse, and I regret that but it was his own greedy fault."

"Greedy!" Nack crowed, standing behind Lillehorne.

"Drake's come to take the prisoner into custody!" Lillehorne plowed on. "Where is the prisoner?"

"Tyranthus Slaughter is buried on the grounds of Lord Kent's tobacco plantation in the Carolina colony," Matthew said. "If you wish to know the details, I suggest you visit Nathaniel Powers, or ride to Philadelphia for a meeting with High Constable Abram Farraday. Or Drake can go, I don't care. All I care is that Slaughter's boots are on the next ship leaving for England, which was your stated requirement." Matthew glared holes through the high constable. "And good riddance."

"Sirs!" came a bellow from the deck. "Either move your asses out of the way or start loadin' freight!"

The suggestion of physical labor put naked fear on the faces of Lillehorne and Nack, but Matthew was already descending the gangplank. He strode back along the dock toward his wagon.

Lillehorne hurried to catch up with him, while Nack brought up the rear. "Corbett! Corbett!" Lillehorne said, as he got up beside Matthew. "I'll hear the details from you! This minute!"

Where to begin? Matthew wondered as he walked. If Greathouse had already related the incidents leading up to the exploding safebox, that was to the good. He could pick up the story with Walker, he thought. Of course, sooner or later he was going to run into the part about Mrs. Sutch, and he wasn't sure Lillehorne was ready for that. Certainly it was not something Nack needed to hear, and then go flapping his red rag about town.

He wondered what they would think of Tom's story. That, to him, was the most amazing part.

Tom had spent about eight hours at the house of the Reverend Edward Jennings and his wife in Belvedere. When he had slept enough to get some strength back, he had simply gotten up in the dark just past midnight and gone out the door. He had reasoned that Slaughter was following the road south to Caulder's Crossing, which he himself had passed along on his journey north. Nothing in the world mattered so much as finding that man and killing him, and in the cold resolve of Tom's voice Matthew felt as if Slaughter had come to stand for many tragedies in the boy's life, or maybe Evil itself. In any case, Tom was bound to follow Slaughter no matter how far the killer travelled or how long it took, and so he'd left Belvedere on the same route that Matthew and Walker had followed.

Not knowing about Slaughter's attempt to steal a horse and his subsequent jaunt through the woods, Tom had kept to the road. Just before dawn he'd slept about two more hours, but he'd never needed much sleep anyway. Then, further on and as the day progressed, he'd sighted tracks coming out of the forest. One traveler wearing boots, two wearing moccasins.

They led him to a house he'd stopped at before, on his journey north. Where the family had been kind to him, and fed both him and James. Where the girl named Lark was so very pretty, and so kind as well, and where the boy, Aaron, had shown him a bright variety of colored marbles in a small white clay jar. He and Aaron had spent more than an hour shooting marbles, and it had amazed Tom that there was still a boy to be found somewhere inside him, because by this time he'd already killed a man in self defense down in the Virginia colony.

He had gone into the house, he'd told Matthew. He had not shed a tear, he'd said, since his father had died; he was done crying, he'd said. But these murders, of these innocent and kind people, had shaken him to his soul. Of course he knew who'd done it. And he'd found himself looking at Aaron's marbles scattered across the table, and picking up four or five in his hand, and thinking that if he ever needed anything to keep him going, to push him on when he was tired or hurting or hungry, all he had to do was touch these in his pocket and think of that day a good family had let him be young again.

But he was not young anymore.

He had taken some food from the kitchen table and a knife from a drawer. He didn't think they would mind. He had found the broken boards in the back of the barn. Had found the tracks going up the hill. Had followed four travelers who were following one, deeper into the forest. But he was still weak, he'd told Matthew. Still in pain from his injuries. He was going to kill Slaughter, yes, and he didn't want Matthew or Walker to stop him, or stand in his way. That would be a problem. He figured he was going to have one chance to kill Slaughter. Just one. He would know it when it came.

Gunshots and shouts in the night had given him direction. The next morning he'd sighted Matthew and Walker on the trail, had seen that the Indian was badly hurt, and had ducked down when he knew Walker had gotten a glimpse of him.

There was nothing he could have done at the ravine, where Matthew went over the fallen tree. Tom had watched Lark and her mother jump, but he had also seen the arrow go into Slaughter. Then, at the watermill, Tom had seen Slaughter getting the better of Matthew, had seen Matthew's face about to go into the gears, and the only thing he could do to help was to throw a handful of marbles. He'd hidden when Slaughter had gone rampaging through the woods, and had thought Matthew was swept over the waterfall.

Tom had followed Slaughter into Hoornbeck, had watched him come out of the doctor's house freshly-stitched and go to the Peartree Inn. Tom had hidden all night where he could see the place, and waited for Slaughter to emerge. Early in the morning, Slaughter had come out with another man carrying some boxes, set them in the back of a wagon and headed off. Tom had had to find a horse to steal, in a hurry.

Not far from Philadelphia, Tom had pulled his horse off the road as he'd watched the wagon pull off ahead. Slaughter and the other man sat talking, and then they had gotten down and Slaughter had clapped him on the back as they'd walked into the woods on the side of the road. In a few minutes, Slaughter had returned, climbed up on the wagon and continued on his way alone. Tom had found the corpse in the brush, the throat cut, and had also discovered a few coins in the dead man's pocket, enough to buy him food and drink for the next few days if he couldn't beg or steal anything.

In time, Tom had shadowed Slaughter to a hog farm north of a town called Nicholsburg. He was amazed there to see Matthew appear, and creep into the cellar. The hulking man who had brought a coffin in the back of his wagon and hauled a dead body out of it was clearly up to no good. Matthew hadn't come back out, but it appeared no one had found him yet because the coffin-robber emerged lugging a damp and nasty-looking bag just as easy as you please. So Tom figured the pickaxe in the back of the wagon could be put to some use, and Matthew would have a chance to do whatever he was doing and get out with his skin on.