CHAPTER XII.
The master awoke the next morning, albeit after a restless night, with that clarity of conscience and perception which it is to be feared is more often the consequence of youth and a perfect circulation than of any moral conviction or integrity. He argued with himself that as the only party really aggrieved in the incident of the previous night, the right of remedy remained with him solely, and under the benign influence of an early breakfast and the fresh morning air he was inclined to feel less sternly even towards Seth Davis. In any event, he must first carefully weigh the evidence against him, and examine the scene of the outrage closely. For this purpose, he had started for the school-house fully an hour before his usual time. He was even light-hearted enough to recognize the humorous aspect of Uncle Ben's appeal to him, and his own ludicrously paradoxical attitude, and as he at last passed from the dreary flat into the fringe of upland pines, he was smiling. Well for him, perhaps, that he was no more affected by any premonition of the day before him than the lately awakened birds that lightly cut the still sleeping woods around him in their long flashing sabre-curves of flight. A yellow-throat, destined to become the breakfast of a lazy hawk still swinging above the river, was especially moved to such a causeless and idiotic roulade of mirth that the master listening to the foolish bird was fain to whistle too. He presently stopped, however, with a slight embarrassment. For a few paces before him Cressy had unexpectedly appeared.
She had evidently been watching for him. But not with her usual indolent confidence. There was a strained look of the muscles of her mouth, as of some past repression, and a shaded hollow under her temples beneath the blonde rings of her shorter hair. Her habitually slow, steady eye was troubled, and she cast a furtive glance around her before she searched him with her glance. Without knowing why, yet vaguely fearing that he did, he became still more embarrassed, and in the very egotism of awkwardness, stammered without a further salutation: “A disgraceful thing has happened last night, and I'm up early to find the perpetrator. My desk was broken into, and”—
“I know it,” she interrupted, with a half-impatient, half uneasy putting away of the subject with her little hand—“there—don't go all over it again. Paw and Maw have been at me about it all night—ever since those Harrisons in their anxiousness to make up their quarrel, rushed over with the news. I'm tired of it!”
For an instant he was staggered. How much had she learned! With the same awkward indirectness, he said vaguely, “But it might have been YOUR letters, you know?”
“But it wasn't,” she said, simply. “It OUGHT to have been. I wish it had”—She stopped, and again regarded him with a strange expression. “Well,” she said slowly, “what are you going to do?”
“To find out the scoundrel who has done this,” he said firmly, “and punish him as he deserves.”
The almost imperceptible shrug that had raised her shoulders gave way as she regarded him with a look of wearied compassion.
“No,” she said, gravely, “you cannot. They're too many for you. You must go away, at once.”