Kimble, still on the run, encounters a woman, (Antoinette Bower), who needs a handyman and instinctively knows (A) she likes and trusts him and (B) when she finds out who he is, she immediately knows he must be innocent. Kimble's greatest virtue is that his virtue shines through so powerfully that each week somebody who can help him "just knows he's innocent". It's a good quality to have.
Unfortunately, she has a boyfriend who is- you guessed it- a deputy sheriff. Kimble has to leave and winds up encountering Lawrence Naismith, in an over-the-top performance, playing a hermit with a couple of snarling dogs he uses to keep strangers away. But for some reason he decides to help Kimble who has once again been wounded, (by now he has more scars than Matt Dillon). They befriend each other, which means Kimble is subjected to Naismith's rants about the evils of civilization. As a fugitive facing execution for a murder he didn't commit, he might be inclined to agree. This is another possible chance for Kimble to find a new life, if a rather empty one. Kimble recognizes that the old man, for all of his contempt for civilization, is lonely and needs Kimble for companionship.
Any hope of staying with him ends when Naismith becomes deathly ill and Kimble has to return to civilization to get the medication that might save him. Eventually he connects the compassionate Bower to the situation and there is some hope for the old man- but Kimble is again off, searching for his own hope. But now he's finally going to find it.