Mr. Smith knit his brows. “To have known this before! What the devil——� He looked at Jake Andrews and adjusted his face and words. “You have acted with the wisdom and patriotism in coming to me. It is service to Government. And there are rewards; much money. But it is of the most importance that you keep cemetery stillness.� He paused and his lips writhed and set themselves in a hard, cruel line. Then he said: “We shall not be surprised now to hear of the outrages. But what happens, keep you silence except to me.�
The week went by quietly, in spite of Mr. Smith’s prediction. Black Mayo came home, without a word about his guest or his journey, and went here and there more busily than ever with his pigeons for trial flights.
And then things did happen.
The Home Guard at Redville had received orders months before to patrol the high bridge over which troops and supplies were constantly passing on their way to Camp Lee or to Norfolk. Day and night the youths in khaki paced to and fro, with guns on their shoulders. And then—what a thrill of horror it sent through the community!—one of the bridge guards was killed. The shot came from the heart of a black, rainy night that hid the criminal. He went free, ready to strike again—where? whom?—at any minute. Was it one of the deserters? Probably not. Their one aim would be to “lay low� and avoid arrest; and probably they were far away; the community had been thoroughly searched without finding them.
A few days after the bridge guard was killed, Sweet William came running from the mill in great distress.
“It’s poisoned, mother!� sobbed the little fellow. “There’s glass in it; the flour we were saving for the Belgians.�
“What’s the matter, dear? What is it, Patsy?� exclaimed Mrs. Osborne.
“It’s so, mother,� cried Patsy. “Oh, mother! Cousin Giles found glass in a lot of flour. Some one got in and put glass there, to poison it; in our mill, our own mill here at Larkland.�
The finding of glass in flour at Larkland mill was the one subject of conversation in The Village that Saturday night. And on Sunday—a day that in the little Presbyterian town seemed stiller and sweeter than other days—people stood in troubled groups at the church door, discussing the matter. The minister even referred to it in his prayer—not directly, that would have been regarded as irreverent—but with the veiled allusions considered more acceptable to the Almighty.
Glass in flour at the mill, Larkland mill! The people resented it with a vehemence that would have puzzled outsiders. Larkland mill was not merely a mill. It was one of the oldest, most honored, most loyal members of the community. As the quaint inscription on its wall said, “This mill was finished building by Hugh Giles Osborne his men, 8 June, in year of our Lord 1764, ye third year of his gracious majesty King George III.� On its oaken beams were marks of the fire set to it by Tarleton’s men because that Hugh Giles Osborne’s sons were fighting side by side with Washington. Nearly a century later, soldiers in blue marching from Georgia had taken toll of its stores. And then Colonel Osborne, coming back in defeat to poverty, had laid aside his Confederate uniform and become a miller, as his son was to-day.