"Katy Gaumer came to the house this evening and told me a strange thing. She says that she saw my father with the communion cup in his hand the day that the service disappeared from the church."
"The communion cup?" repeated the squire, startled almost out of his wits. "What communion cup?"
"The one that disappeared."
"Katy saw him!" Here was Katy again, Katy who had seemed to them all to be such a promising child, Katy who was determined to go away to school, Katy who helped young rascals from her poverty, Katy who now would not study, who refused to do anything but sit dismally about! "Katy Gaumer," he repeated. "Our Katy?"
"Yes, Katy Gaumer," said David. "She says she was a little child and that she ran away from her grandmother to the church and saw my father put the silver cup into a hole made by plastering up the window."
"Impossible!" cried the squire. "Nonsense! Humbug! The girl is crazy. It couldn't be!"
David looked at him and drew a deep breath.
"That was what I said. Then I thought of Koehler, and of how he had gone mad, and I knew my father would wish it investigated."
An electric shock tingled the squire's sensorium. He remembered the contorted face, the trembling hands, the terrible earnestness with which Koehler made his attack upon the dead man.