The Mystery of the Locks

by E. W. Howe

CHAPTER VI.

PICTURES IN THE FIRE.

Allan Dorris was seeing pleasant pictures in the cheerful fire which burned in his room, for he watched it intently from early evening until dusk, and until after the night came on.

The look of discontent that had distinguished his face was absent for the first time since he had occupied the strange old house. Perhaps a cheerful man may see pleasant pictures in a fire which produces only tragedies for one who is sad; for it is certain that Allan Dorris had watched the same fire before, and cursed its pictures, and walked up and down the room in excitement afterward with clenched fists and a wicked countenance. But there was peace in his heart now, and it could not be disturbed by the malicious darkness that looked in at his windows; for the nights were so dark in Davy's Bend that they seemed not an invitation to rest, but an invitation to prowl, and lurk, and do wicked things.

When Mrs. Wedge brought in the lamp, and put it down on the mantel, he did not look up to say a cheerful word, as was his custom, but continued gazing into the fire; and she noticed that he was in better humor than he had ever been before during their acquaintance. Usually his thinking made him frown, but to-night he seemed to be enjoying it.

The worthy woman took pleasure in finding excuses to go to his room as often as possible, for he seemed to bless her for the intrusion upon his loneliness; but for once he did not seem to realize her presence, and he was thinking more intensely than usual.

Mrs. Wedge had come to greatly admire the new occupant of The Locks. That he was a man of intelligence and refinement there was no doubt; she believed this for so many reasons that she never pretended to enumerate them. Besides being scrupulously neat in his habits, which was a great deal in the orderly woman's eyes, he was uniformly polite and pleasant, except when he was alone, when he seemed to storm at himself.

There was a certain manly way about him—a disposition to be just to everyone, even to his housekeeper—that won her heart; and she had lain awake a great many nights since he had come to The Locks, wondering about him; for he had never dropped the slightest hint as to where he came from, or why he had selected Davy's Bend as a place of residence.

She often said to herself that a bad man could not laugh as cheerfully as Allan Dorris did when he dropped in at her little house to spend a half-hour, on which occasions he talked good-humoredly of matters which must have seemed trifling to one of his fine intelligence; and she was certain that no one in hiding for the commission of a grave offence could have captured the affections of Betty as completely as he had done, for the child always cried when he returned to his own room, or went out at the iron gate to ramble over the hills, and thought of little else except the time when she could see him again.

Mrs. Wedge had heard that children shrink from the touch of hands that have engaged in violence or dishonor, and watched the growing friendship between the two with a great deal of interest.