“What are you going to do, Millie Evans? Oh, I don’t know. I never seen anyone in a dead faint before.” She knelt down, put her arm under the boy’s head and poured some brandy between his lips. It spilled down both sides of his mouth. She dipped a corner of her apron in the water and wiped his face and his hair and his throat, with fingers that trembled. Under the dust and sweat his face gleamed, white as her apron, and thin, and puckered in little lines. A strange dreadful feeling gripped Millie Evans’ bosom — some seed that had never flourished there, unfolded and struck deep roots and burst into painful leaf. “Are yer coming round? Feeling all right again?” The boy breathed sharply, half choked, his eyelids quivered, and he moved his head from side to side. “You’re better,” said Millie, smoothing his hair. “Feeling fine now again, ain’t you?” The pain in her bosom half suffocated her. “It’s no good you crying, Millie Evans. You got to keep your head.” Quite suddenly he sat up and leaned against the wood pile, away from her, staring on the ground. “There now!” cried Millie Evans, in a strange, shaking voice. The boy turned and looked at her, still not speaking, but his eyes were so full of pain and terror that she had to shut her teeth and clench her hands to stop from crying. After a long pause he said, in the little voice of a child talking in his sleep, “I’m hungry.” His lips quivered. She scrambled to her feet and stood over him. “You come right into the house and have a sit-down meal,” she said. “Can you walk?” “Yes,” he whispered, and swaying he followed her across the glaring yard to the veranda. At the bottom step he paused, looking at her again, “I’m not coming in,” he said. He sat on the veranda step in the little pool of shade that lay round the house. Millie watched him. “When did yer last ’ave anythink to eat?” He shook his head. She cut a chunk off the greasy corned beef and a round of bread plastered with butter; but when she brought it he was standing up, glancing around him, and paid no attention to the plate of food. “When are they coming back?” he stammered.

At that moment she knew. She stood, holding the plate, staring. He was Harrison. He was the English johnny who’d killed Mr Williamson. “I know who you are,” she said, very slowly, “yer can’t fox me. That’s who you are. I must have been blind in me two eyes not to ’ave known from the first.” He made a movement with his hands as though that was all nothing. “When are they coming back?” And she meant to say, “Any minute.