She saw the startled look on his face and expected him, like all the others (at least once their wives had shown their faces), to order her to keep away from the house while he brought milk and then to feed the child and leave his land immediately, or else. But this man stepped toward her, calling out to someone in the house as he did so. And then she realized, not from experience but from base instinct, that pulling down her blue scarf, together with her smiling offer to do “anything at all” in return for milk and food, had been taken by this man to be an invitation to advance and put his hands on her. Her hair was not short enough to scare him off. “You’ll have the milk,” he said. “You’ll have it twice.” Another man appeared behind him at the door.

When Margaret and Bella had not returned to their rendezvous tree by late afternoon, Andrew Bose acted out of character. Anxious, fretful, and exasperated by Melody’s demands that he “do something on his own account for a change” rather than just cussing their misfortune and feeling sorry for himself, he volunteered to do exactly what she suggested and risk “a little scout” into the nearest fields.

He left his wife in charge of all their possessions. She would, she said, make as much smoke as she could if the missing couple were to return in his absence and as much noise as she could if a stranger approached and offered her “any inconvenience.” She was pleased with herself for sounding so spirited in such worrying circumstances. In fact, she had discovered, and liked herself for it, that she could be tougher—steelier, to use the older word — than she had expected. Acton first. Now Bella. She still felt strong and calm and ready to be tested further, although she acknowledged in her heart that the prospect of Andrew’s being the third loss to the family was one that was mildly amusing to her imagination only so long as it didn’t actually happen. He was thin water, though. No denying it.

Her husband set off across the strips of field toward the wood cottage that Margaret had identified, just before noon, as promising. Andrew, whose distance eyesight was still sharp despite his age, had clambered onto the same tree trunk as Margaret and agreed that, yes, her eyes were not deceiving her, that was a man outside the house and those were cattle, though he could not specify whether they were shes or hes.

“Take your knife,” Melody instructed him, but he thought it better to arrive at the dwelling empty-handed. He doubted that the inhabitants would want any nets mended — they hadn’t passed a decent river for days — and knew for certain that he would not be able to use a knife effectively for any other purpose. He had no plan in mind, other than to take no great risks. He’d satisfy his wife’s challenge and no more. He would walk as quietly as he could, keeping to the shade and to the low ground as much as possible, and see what he could see from a safe distance.

He did not approach the house directly by its path but followed a line of trees and then a highish loose stone wall that provided good cover. The only sound he could hear, apart from the entirely natural disharmony of birds and wind and branches, was the half gate of an abandoned hut that was swinging noisily on the last of its leather hinges and repeatedly banging its jamb. But by the time Andrew Bose had reached the end of the wall a dog had begun barking. You can’t creep up on a dog. Andrew waited. There was no point in running away from a dog. He expected it to arrive with its inquiring nose at any moment. He would do his best to charm it. Perhaps he should have brought that knife. Stabbing a dog would be no more difficult, surely, than gutting a good-sized fish. But not only did the dog fail to arrive, it also stopped barking after a while.

Andrew counted to a hundred before he dared to stand a little and look over the wall toward the house. There was a dog, its head between its paws, safely leashed at the side wall, but no one was looking out across the land to discover why his guard had been making such a din. The only movement Andrew could spot was from the back of the house, where there were at least three cows in a deeply slurried pasture. For a moment he was tempted just to stand up and call out Margaret’s name. If he shouted loud enough and then ducked behind his wall, he would be able to hear any reply but no one would be able to see who’d done the shouting or where from. But they might untie the dog. And, as he had seen, the dog was a large one. Even if they did not release the dog (and a clear sense of they had already formed in his imagination: they were the same group who had already taken Acton), if they decided to chase after him, what chance would an old, tired man like him stand? No, he would stick to his current policy and stay both quiet and hidden. He skirted the front of the house, still pressing close to fences, walls, and hedges, until he reached the boundary of the cow paddock, on the opposite side of the house from the dog. There he could hope that his odor might be masked by stronger ones.

He waited for another count of a hundred, watching for any movement. There was nothing. He felt reasonably satisfied that unless the rooms were occupied by drunks or men without legs or hostages tied up, the only living creatures within the grounds of this house were the cattle and the dog. So, thinking not only of the heroic tale he would be able to tell Melody later that day but also of how he would never forgive himself if this first chance of finding his granddaughter was refused, he walked across the pasture, using the cows as shields as much as possible, and pressed himself up against the rear of the cottage. Again he waited and listened. Nothing, other than the sounds that empty houses make. So, with his heart racing and his mouth dry, he peered between the shutter boards in the larger of the two windows into the long, single room, half expecting to find Franklin, Acton, and Margaret trussed in ropes, with little Bella crawling in the dust. But all he could see was a table with a pair of leather boots on it and two bed boards covered in a tangle of blankets. Otherwise the house was unfurnished and certainly not permanently inhabited.

Now he was confident, though disappointed. He walked around to the front of the house by way of a side gate, and — this surely was courageous for an aging net maker — went inside. Other than a damaged harness and a leather strap that somebody had dropped on the doorstep, there was nothing more to see than he had noticed from the rear window. Just leather boots and bedding. But fresh hoofmarks in the earth outside suggested that horsemen — only two or three, so far as he could tell — had recently departed, probably only that afternoon. There was nothing to suggest that Bella and Margaret had even reached the house or that there was anything there to be feared, other than a tethered dog that now, for reasons of its own, began to bark again. Andrew thought he heard shuffling and a voice, a baby’s cry, perhaps. A bird? It was time for him to flee.

It was dark by the time Andrew found his wife again. She was shaking and hardly able to breathe. Her period of mild amusement on her husband’s departure had been short-lived. As soon as he was out of sight, she could no longer admire herself as tough and steely or ready for greater tests. Without her husband’s timidity to measure herself against, she soon felt unprotected and exposed. Even though there had been no strangers to offer any “inconvenience,” every bird and every cracking branch terrified her. Every shifting shadow made her jump. She’d never known such fear and anxiety before. What if neither her husband nor her granddaughter came back to her? That would be worse than losing Bella’s mother. That would be worse than losing Acton. It was not that she loved Andrew better than her son (indeed, she did not) or was so deeply attached to her granddaughter that the thought of life without her was impossible. It was rather that she was alone.