then hears them tell Winnie their sad tale.  Unfortunately, they have no idea he was listening.

[Through] it all, not one of them noticed that the man they had passed on the road, the man in the yellow suit, had crept up to the bushes by the stream and heard it all, the whole fantastic story. Nor did they notice that he was following now … (Ch. 8)

The man follows them to the Tuck house.  His intention is to find the spring and get rich off of it, selling people the dream of being immortal.  The Tucks tell no one about the spring because they do not consider being stopped in time a good thing.  All the man in the yellow suit thinks of is greed.

Mae is so surprised to see him and learn that their secret is out that she just reacts.  He had told her that he was there to get Winnie, but that was just an excuse.  He managed to go on ahead of the constable, who was going to slowly for his taste.  She gets upset when he says he is going to take Winnie.

With a dull cracking sound, the stock of the shotgun smashed into the back of his skull. He dropped like a tree, his face surprised, his eyes wide open. And at that very moment, riding through the pine trees just in time to see it all, came the Treegap constable. (Ch. 19)

Mae Tuck did not mean to kill the man in the yellow suit.  She is arrested anyway.  The problem is that if she is hanged, she won’t die.  The Tuck's secret will then be out.  Winnie knows that, and she wants to help Mae Tuck break out of jail.  Miles has a plan, but Winne's plan involves Winnie changing places with Mae so that the constable won’t find out she’s gone until she is long gone.

"I can help! When your mother climbs out the window, I'll climb in and take her place. I can wrap myself up in her blanket, and when the constable looks in, he won't be able to tell the difference. Not in the dark. I can hump up and look a lot bigger….” (Ch. 22)

Jesse asks Winnie to wait until she is his age and then drink the spring water to become immortal like them.  He wants to spend his life with her.  The Tucks vanish with Mae, and years later we learn that Winnie did not drink from the spring, and died a natural death.

There are no chores Tuck gives Winnie in Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, but he does charge her with a task to fulfill. The task he gives her is keeping the secret of the spring in the wood her family owns.

When Winnie meets Jesse, Miles, and Mae Tuck, she learns that 87 years ago the Tucks passed through the wood and stopped for a drink at the spring. The spring gave them eternal life and froze them in their current ages so that the Tucks never grew older, got sick, or changed in any other way. The Tucks then carry her to their home to speak with Mr. Tuck so that Mr. Tuck can convince her to keep the spring a secret.

While out in the rowboat with Winnie after dinner, Tuck explains to Winnie about the circle of life, how everything is constantly moving and changing and that death is a part of this endless circle, keeping the circle going. Tuck further explains that, since his family members drank from the spring, he and his family members are no longer part of this circle. He asks her to imagine what people would do if they learned of a spring that gave eternal life. Since people naturally hate death, people would "all come running like pigs to slops. They'd trample each other, trying to get some of that water" (Ch. 12). He further asks her to imagine the following:

All the little ones little forever, all the old ones old forever. Can you picture what that means? Forever? (Ch. 12)

Because he sees the threat of people living forever, of even suffering forever, Tuck begs Winnie to keep the powers of the spring a secret.