Late the next day I awoke, brighter and fresher than I had been for many days, but exceedingly feeble. Luke brought me a draught of some strange kind of beer, which revived me greatly, and when I had taken it, he told me how he had returned late yesterday from Doncaster with the physician, and found everybody at Temple Belwood in much trouble about my disappearance. No one had surmised I might be gone to Sandtoft, but Luke naturally guessed my purpose; so, taking pole, lantern and cleat-boards, he made off to Belshaw, where he heard of my doings, and struck across the fen in a bee-line for the settlement. He had only to make the signals which had been agreed on between him and Martha, a whistle like that of the grey plover, followed by an owl's cry, to bring his sweetheart to their trysting place, but was confounded to learn that nothing had been seen or heard of me at Doctor Goel's. Prowling cautiously about, Martha keeping watch, he found the punt, and having this assurance of my being in the neighbourhood, he returned to Martha. As they entered within the palisade through an opening concealed by a clump of willows, a flare of cressets and torches showed me and my conductors going from the guard-room to the gallows, and they hurried to the doctor's house with the news. What followed is already written.
When I spoke of going home, the doctor took a tone of authority, and vowed he would detain me, by force, if need were, until he had satisfied himself I ran no more danger of losing my arm. I made no stout resistance, but despatched Luke to Temple to set my father's mind at ease, and bring me a change of clothing and other matters of which I stood in need, and settled myself down in the doctor's household most contentedly. A marvellous change had come over me, which may have been due to the removal of the venom from my blood, as the doctor affirmed, or to my being under the same roof with Anna, as I inclined to believe. No one seemed to apprehend further trouble from Vliet, and I began to doubt whether my experience of the previous evening had been real or only a nightmare. Doctor Goel sat in his own room, pipe in mouth, over leaves and roots and such like rubbish, now and then coming out to ask me questions, giving as his reason for so doing that I had a quick eye, and a habit of observation remarkable in one unskilled in the sciences, but I thought his true intent was to hinder my being alone with his daughter, albeit there was small chance of that, for Anna had housewifely duties (or made them), which caused her to be going and coming continually. Now it was to make up medicine for her father's patients; now to confer with Martha about kitchen matters; now to look out old clothing for some of the poorer sort among the settlers; always something to break off our converse as I approached the topic nearest my heart. So, despairing of a talk with her for the present, I made bold to interrupt the doctor in his curious pastime. He bore the interruption courteously, though he sighed as he put down his glass and ceased to pore over the stuff on the table. I asked him whether Vliet had abandoned his drunken freak at Mistress Goel's intercession.