The child sat for a moment in dumb astonishment, glancing, with distended eyes and sweat upon his brow, fearfully from the stern face of the old man to the downcast features of the widow, when recovering speech he asked:—
"Why should my brother kill Mr. Barbary, if he was his friend? Was not Elbridge always kind, mother? I'm sure he was to me, and used to let me ride old Sorrel before him to the mill!"
"Ever kind? He was. There was not a day he did not make glad his poor mother's heart, with some generous act of devotion to her. No sun set on the day which did not cheer her lonely hearth with a new light of gladness and peace from his young eyes."
"Margaret, you forget. He was soft of heart, but proud of spirit, and haughty beyond his age; you may not remember, even I could not always look down his anger, or silence his loudness of speech. Why should he kill Mr. Barbary? I will tell you, child: the preacher, too, had discerned well your brother's besetting sin, and, being fearless in duty, from the Sabbath pulpit he spake of it plainly and with such point that it could not fail to come home directly to the bosom of the young man. This was on the very Lord's day before Mr. Barbary disappeared from amongst us. It rankled in your brother's bosom like poison; his passions were wild and ungoverned, and this was cause enough. If he had been innocent, why did Elbridge Peabody flee this neighborhood, like a thief in the night?"
"Why did my brother Elbridge leave us, mother?" said the child, bending eagerly towards the widow, who wrung her hands and was silent.
"He may come back," said the child, shaking his flaxen locks, and not abashed in the least by her silence. "He may come back yet and explain all to us."
"Never!"
At that very moment a red rooster, who stood with his burnished wings on the garden wall, near enough to have heard all that had passed, lifted up his throat, and poured forth a clear cry, which rang through the placid air far and wide.
"He will—I know he will," said little Sam Peabody, leaping down from his judgment-seat in the window. "Chanticleer knows he will, or he would not speak in that way. He hasn't crowed once before, you know, grandfather, since Elbridge went away; we'll hear from brother soon, I know we shall—I know we shall!"
The little fellow, in his glee, clapped his hands and crowed too. The grandfather, looking on his gambols, smiled, but was presently sad again.