Daniel answered that being frightened was a poor way to learn.
He said there was a difference between correcting somebody and making them afraid to try.
Jonah nodded and began asking questions more freely.
Daniel set aside part of his wages each week for Eleanor’s care.
He sent the money through Judith with a note stating that it came without conditions.
Judith reported the expenses carefully because she believed transparency protected everyone involved.
She also told Daniel he could visit whenever circumstances allowed.
The offer pleased and frightened him.
He had begun to imagine that a child might know him without being forced to choose between the people who cared for her.
Peter, the stable hand injured by Richard’s pistol, recovered enough to walk without assistance.
He had been moved to a smaller farm after the incident and expected never to see Blackwood Manor again.
Nathaniel found him through a horse trader who remembered the injury.
Peter was older now and less willing to accept the Colonel’s explanation that the shot had been accidental.
Peter described carrying a message upstairs on the evening Richard returned unexpectedly.
He heard Richard shouting at Catherine about a locked room and an unnamed man.
The Colonel opened his study door with a pistol in his hand.
Peter stepped into the hall at the wrong moment.
Richard turned toward the sound and fired.
The bullet struck Peter’s shoulder rather than the chest it might have reached.
Richard had later ordered him to say that a weapon discharged during cleaning.
Peter understood that refusal might lead to worse punishment.
He repeated the story whenever an overseer asked.
Now he wanted to correct it before the false version became the only one remembered.
Nathaniel took his statement and asked why he had waited.
Peter answered that he had not been waiting for courage.
He had been waiting for a situation in which telling the truth would not immediately put a pistol in his face again.
Nathaniel felt ashamed of the question and apologized.
The statement supported Daniel’s account of the night he was sold.
It also showed how Richard’s anger had endangered people unrelated to his dispute with Catherine.
Isaiah added it to the growing packet of records.
He warned that testimony given after a long delay might be challenged.
Peter said he understood and would speak anyway if called.
When Daniel read the account, he remembered the boy bleeding against the wall.
He remembered Mercy’s hands moving quickly and Catherine asking only that the injured servant be removed before dinner.
