Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I was convinced. Surely this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He had his every feature. For the time there was no doubt in either of our minds. We were too happy for words.”

But then the examination of the child began and the discrepancies appeared. The child was Jimmie’s size and age. His hair and eyes were of the same color and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike. This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of Jimmie’s peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of Mr. Glass’ son; there was an old scar on one foot that was unlike anything that had disfigured Jimmie, and there were other slight differences.

Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away. Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find other evidence that might yet change their minds.

A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her, that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store, hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and other local emotionals.

So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took in the Rosses years before.

One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.

Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too, had taken part. Could this be—— He did not stop to ponder much, but looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing, carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.

Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have lain down on his side and wakened no more.

Little was found in addition to the shoes and the skull, except a few bone buttons, the metal clasps from a child’s garters and such like. The skull and shoes furnished the evidence needed. The former, examined by experts, revealed the double crown which had caused the upstanding of the missing boy’s back hair. The shoes, washed free of the encasing mud, showed the maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole. All the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have retained the mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn a brand new pair the morning he strayed out.

Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered away that seductive May morning, gone on and on, as children sometimes do, got into the boggy ground and been unable to get out. Exhaustion had overtaken him, and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again, this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring of 1915, and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in and been drowned, only to have his bones cast up again by the droughty fall eight years later.