The judge looked perplexed, as well he might. “Brought him home in a carriage, you say? Why, I thought—” But he did not add what he thought.
“Yes, and that wasn’t all. It seems that Mr. Harding knows Mr. Brant, and he told William his whole history. Will wouldn’t repeat it—he said it wasn’t fit for me to hear—but he told me enough so that I shall know what to say to Mr. Brant if he ever has the effrontery to come here again.”
Here was a fresh mystery, but the judge was wise enough not to repeat what Dorothy had told him. Moreover, he knew his son’s failings too well to place implicit confidence in any story of his told in a peace-making moment after an escapade. Wherefore he counselled moderation.
“I shouldn’t take too much for granted if I were you, Martha,” he said. “There are always two sides to an accusation like that, and possibly Mr. Brant may have something to say for himself. Anyway, I should give him a chance.”
“That is precisely what I shall do,” Mrs. Langford rejoined, with a tightening of the firm lips that boded ill for the man who was to be given the chance; after which she went to breakfast, leaving her husband to the company of his own thoughts—thoughts which were far from comforting.
How much of William’s story could be believed? And who was this man Harding who claimed to know Brant? If the latter was the one who had prevailed upon Will to come home, how was it that the boy had come in a carriage with the former? And which of the two had suppressed the mention of William Langford’s name in the published lists of the accused? These and many more perplexing questions suggested themselves, and the judge was no nearer the heart of the tangle when he finally went out to seek Brant at the railway offices.
CHAPTER X
THE STRING TO THE SHAFT
As for Brant, the day following the retrieval of the body of William Langford was a day to be marked in the calendar as the Feast of the Mingled Cups. Having been up rather more than half the night, he was a little late at the office, and he found the chief engineer getting ready to go up the line on the day train.
“Good morning, Brant,” said the colonel. “You are just in time. I want Grotter’s field notes to take with me. What did you do with the book?”
Brant found the notebook, and began to say something about late hours and their next morning consequences, but the colonel only laughed good-naturedly: