"What is your plan, David?" he asked.
"I thought we might get the key of the church and go out there and look about. It's bright moonlight and I believe we can see without making a light. I don't believe I can sleep until I have been out there and have looked about. I suppose we will have to get a key from the preacher."
"I have a key," said the squire. "But let us wait till to-morrow, David."
"I must go to-night," insisted David.
Only once were words exchanged on the journey. The two men went out the village street, past Grandfather Gaumer's, where a hundred sweet odors saluted them from the garden and where Katy lay weeping on her bed, to the path along the pike, between the open fields.
"You knew my father," said David. "Such a thing could not have been possible."
"I knew him from a boy," answered the squire heartily and honestly. "Such a thing could not have been possible."
"Had Koehler ever made this accusation before the time of my father's funeral?"
"He made it to the preacher after the service disappeared, but the preacher told him he must be still."
"Could Koehler have had any motive for taking it himself?"