At the footpoints of loops spanning a site of flux emergence, earlier investigated in the papers by Solanki et al. (2003) and Lagg et al. (2004), we find large redshifts in the He 1083 nm line coexisting with an almost unshifted component. The speed associated with these redshifts reaches values as high as 40 km/s. We interpret these downflows in the context of several models: the free-fall downflow of matter along vertical field lines (Schmidt et al. 2000), the redshift by downward propagating acoustic waves (Hansteen 1993) and the motion of condensation regions to either side of loop footpoints (Müller et al. 2003). We present the temporal evolution of these redshifts and reconstruct the magnetic field vector in these regions for both the redshifted and the unshifted atmospheric component.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html