"The air feels good; but I can't stop here," said Dave, hurrying away and returning to the keeper's room. "There! I have done all I could, and now--"
There came to him again the words of the psalmist, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."
He could rest on that promise. He was beginning to find out what God could be in the time of trouble. Friends might fail him; on every side there might be an emptiness, a loneliness. All about him settled the presence of God, filling up this solitude, this waste, this night. He could lean on God and--wait. Others might suspect his integrity. He knew he was not guilty, and he welcomed the thought of God's knowledge--that God saw to the bottom of his heart, and into the depths of his life, and God knew he was innocent. Yes, he could wait.
That evening Thomas Trafton, his old mother, and Bart sat around the little table of pine on which the kitchen lamp had been placed. The father was telling where he had been that day and whom he had seen.
"Dave Fletcher was down at the fish-house to-day. He spoke, Bart, of your looking through the spy-glass, but he did not think it necessary."
"Did he speak of it?" said Bart eagerly. "I have a great mind to--"
"To go out?" asked his father--"to go out and see? Oh, nonsense! No more need of it than my going to Australia."
"Oh, let him go if he wants to," pleaded the grandmother; and the father assented.
Bart reached up to the spy-glass resting on a shelf, took it down, and seizing his hat also, hurried outdoors. He was going through the yard, when he saw somebody stealing away from a shed in the rear of the house.
"Why, if that don't look like Dave Fletcher himself!" thought Bart. "Dave Fletcher!" he shouted.