Although it is now the morning of November seventeenth, the mild and spring-like Southern autumn has not yet presented any wintry aspects, and the wide, old-fashioned fireplace in the Westbrook library gives no indication that it has been recently used.
If any papers had been removed from the General's desk, they had not been destroyed here—unless, indeed, the fireplace had been cleaned since midnight, which was scarcely likely. Still, the Captain continued to scrutinize the bricks; and when McCaleb returned, he was carefully picking between them with the point of his pencil.
"Find anything?" asked the young man, as Converse stood upright.
"No; and yet, some paper has been burnt here recently. But it could not have been the missing one.... Have you a pocket-lamp?"
From the recesses of his blue coat McCaleb produced a short black tube with a bull's-eye in one end—an electric dark-lantern, operated by the simple means of pressing and releasing a button in its side. This the Captain took and moved toward the open window. He got down on his hands and knees, looked intently at the sill, and, still in a crouching attitude, passed out to the veranda—or, in local parlance, "gallery"—McCaleb following close behind. His course led him directly to the east end, where he cautioned his companion to move carefully.
"I want to examine these marks again by daylight," he explained; "but they are pretty distinct even now. There is just enough moisture to-night to soften the turf and cause smaller bits of gravel from the driveway to cling to one's feet."
While talking, he flashed the light upon various points between the gallery's edge and the open window.
"See, Mac; just like the traces inside. Lucky—there might have been none."
Together they moved silently, swiftly; their eyes kindling with a keen alertness that missed not the least particular. The nature of the occasional brief comments indulged in by one or the other indicated clearly that each took it for granted that their thoughts were running in the same channel.
McCaleb's thin, aquiline features were tense, his black eyes fairly luminous with eager concentration.