Then Ruth said, “What about Daniel?”

Alden opened his mouth to repeat the promise of a better room. Ruth waited, refusing the distraction.

“What about the false charge?” she asked. “What about the threat to sell him for refusing something he had a right to refuse?”

Catherine had remained near the door. She stepped forward, her face pale and drawn. “It was my charge. I withdraw it.”

Ruth stared at her. “You cannot unsay what you said. But you can tell every person who heard it that it was false.”

Catherine looked at Alden. He would not rescue her from that obligation. There were things even the master of the house could not erase from the memory of people who had witnessed them.

She walked out into the yard and spoke where the workers could hear. She said Daniel had not stolen her bracelet. She said he had not threatened her. She admitted that she had tried to force an intimacy he had refused and that she had used her position to punish him. Her voice broke once; no one interrupted. When she finished, the silence did not turn into forgiveness.

Daniel went to the ruined drying house and looked at the broken frame. The counterweight lay half buried in the pit, black with earth. Beside it was the oak wedge that had bought them time, split cleanly down the middle. A little object, made to do one precise job, had survived exactly as long as it needed to.

Silas approached, carrying his tool roll. “I am leaving for the county seat again,” he said. “Fiske wants me to show the committee how the pin was cut.”

“Tell them everything.”

“I will.” He hesitated. “I am sorry about the bracelet.”

Daniel examined him. “You knew somebody would suffer. You decided not to ask who.”

“I did.”

“Then remember that the next time a man pays you not to know.”

Silas nodded. He left without asking for a handshake.

9. THE SECOND INSPECTION

The county committee returned before the replacement beam had arrived. Fiske came with two mechanics, a clerk, and a wagon carrying a compact iron press he had brought from a neighboring estate. A young man named Tobias Venn stepped down behind him. He wore a frock coat too fine for the muddy road and carried a watch he checked whenever somebody disagreed with him.

Venn had been the partner who expected to benefit if Fiske died. Nobody said so aloud when he entered the yard, but Ruth watched him glance first at the drying house and then at the carriage shed where Pike had been arrested. He had the composed look of a man approaching a table where the game had already been interrupted.