The author wishes to speak the truth, so he owns that perhaps Oswald had some idea that the Ancient Mariner, who knew so much about smugglers and highwaymen, might be able to think of some way for us to save ourselves from prison without getting an innocent person put into it. Oswald found the mariner smoking a black pipe by his cottage door. He winked at Oswald as usual. Then Oswald said:
'I want to ask your advice; but it's a secret. I know you can keep secrets.'
When the aged one had agreed to this, Oswald told him all. It was a great relief.
The mariner listened with deep attention, and when Oswald had quite done, he said:
'It ain't the stone jug this time mate. That there balloon of yours, I see it go up—fine and purty 'twas, too.'
'We all saw it go up,' said Oswald in despairing accents. 'The question is, where did it come down?'
'At Burmarsh, sonny,' was the unexpected and unspeakably relieving reply. 'My sister's husband's niece—it come down and lodged in their pear-tree—showed it me this morning, with the red ink on it what spelled your names out.'
Oswald, only pausing to wring the hand of his preserver, tore home on the wings of the wind to tell the others.
I don't think we were ever so glad of anything in our lives. It is a frightfully blighting thing when you believe yourself to be an Arsenicator (or whatever it is) of the deepest dye.
As soon as we could think of anything but our own cleanness from guilt, we began to fear the worst of Tom Simkins, the farmer at Crown Ovenden. But he came out of it, like us, without a stain on his fair name, because he and his sister and his man Honeysett all swore that he had given a tramp leave to sleep up against the beanstack the night before the fire, and the tramp's pipe and matches were found there. So he got his insurance money; but the tramp escaped.