Washington and Tanna’s visit to Granbourne turns an uncertain search for Titch into the discovery that he survived the years since his disappearance. Mrs. Wilde says she has not seen her son for three years, and a manservant later dates his last known visit to roughly two years earlier. His account links Titch to London, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the papers from Faith Plantation, giving the search a new lead without resolving where Titch has gone.

The search at Granbourne

Washington and Tanna arrive at the Wilde home and ask whether Christopher Wilde is there. Tanna puts the question to Mrs. Wilde after the two visitors have been received at the house; her brief inquiry is met with an answer that initially leaves the identity of the absent Wilde unclear. Mrs. Wilde says she has not seen her son for three years. For Washington, the interval itself is decisive: the news establishes that Titch lived beyond the separation that had left his fate uncertain.

Confirmation and uncertainty

Washington reads Mrs. Wilde’s answer alongside John Willard’s earlier account and recognizes that Titch survived. He pictures him leaving through the snow into an open life, but the information is not a report of a reunion or even a full account of what followed. Mrs. Wilde offers no destination, and the years without contact remain unexplained. The meeting therefore shifts Washington’s understanding without giving him the certainty he wants: Titch is alive, but still absent.

The manservant’s account

A frail manservant provides the more useful history. He says Christopher was at Granbourne some two years earlier, or less, and left upset. He adds that relations between Mrs. Wilde and her sons had often been troubled, though he does not know what distressed Titch on that occasion. His account gives the visit an emotional context while keeping its cause unknown.

The manservant also recalls that Titch was closely involved with the Anti-Slavery Society, frequently attending its offices and seeking ways to assist. After Erasmus Wilde’s death, Titch had placed the plantation papers there; he then went regularly to help sort them. The servant cannot confirm whether Titch managed to sail from Liverpool on the Society’s behalf, and says Titch himself had seemed apprehensive about doing so. What he can confirm is that Titch did not return to Granbourne and was not heard from again there. He directs Washington and Tanna to inquire at the Society’s offices, turning recollection into a practical next step.

What the discovery changes

The news unsettles Washington’s picture of Titch. After hearing that Titch had been seen mumbling in the street, Washington had partly imagined him as half-mad; the servant’s account instead describes someone capable of placing Faith’s records securely and spending his time helping the Society sort them. Titch’s work with those documents also connects his departure to the history of the plantation and to the aftermath of Erasmus’s death, even though the precise purpose and outcome of his intended voyage remain unknown.

The episode ends not with Titch found, but with a route toward finding him. Mrs. Wilde establishes survival; the servant supplies the London lead and identifies the Anti-Slavery Society as the place to pursue it. The distinction matters: Washington’s dread of permanent loss gives way to a possibility of renewed contact, while the unresolved gap between Titch’s last recorded visit and his disappearance keeps the search open. The discovery begins a further stage of the pursuit rather than closing the separation.