Grawson walked over to the window and looked down to the corner of 45th Street and Madison Avenue, at the gas lamps and the people in the street. A cab clicked by, drawn by two horses.

So it was coming to an end, thought Grawson. Five years was a long time to wait, but I could have waited more, plenty more.

He took the badge out of his wallet and looked at it, small in the fat palm of his huge hand, and then put it back again.

His letter of resignation to the Charleston Force had been tendered the day he had received the envelope from Washington. He had taken his savings and boarded the train for New York. The death in Barlow’s meadow had been a duel, in a sense self-defense. It would not be murder, at best. No formal charges had ever been filed, nor would they be. Grawson had not filed them, nor would he. His brother had had a pistol, had asked for the duel. And Clare, she would not file charges, for the scandal would be improper, and what was Frank Grawson, or indeed, Edward Chance, to her? And the state would not make charges. It was as Lester Grawson had wanted. It left him alone with Chance.

It was right, wasn’t it, to kill the man who had killed your brother? Especially when the law wouldn’t do it. There was a higher law wasn’t there, blood-law? I am the law, thought Grawson, the law that you can’t write down but you know, the law before the books, the right before there was the earth or people or animals or Adam or Abel or Cain.

Grawson looked down through the window and saw the men in the cold meadow, and saw Barlow’s oak in the background, the two white shirts.

“He won’t fire,” Grawson had said.

And Frank had smiled and said, “I know,” and didn’t run from that field but stayed there, and was going to shoot a man that wouldn’t fire!

Grawson pressed his forehead to the window. He blinked and all he saw below was the dark street, and the pools of light on the sidewalk, spilled by the burning lamps.