Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives

by George S. McWatters

The old gentleman continued his tale.

"For some years after the death of our child my wife was disconsolate beyond my power to give her any relief. She used to keep to the house constantly; never went abroad among the neighbors, but treated them all kindly when they called at the house, and with no diversion except her household duties, led almost a hermit's life, avoiding seeing whomsoever she decently could. I fitted up a little private room for her, and beguiling her time with reading and with her devotions she spent most of her days. I sought every means to comfort her; called children to the house to play. She was very fond of children, and would chat and chaffer with them to make them happy, as if she too enjoyed it; but there was always a sadness mingled with her smiles upon them even. But I must not stop to tell you too much of this. And now, sir, in our old age has come a grief which weighs her down as did the loss of our blessed, only child.

"I must tell you that, after years had passed, I finally induced my wife to consent to my adopting a bright boy—a cheerful, handsome lad of eight years of age, whose father was a good, honest laborer on my farm, but had been killed some months before by the falling upon him of a tree which he had cut. He having lost his life in my employ, I felt a particular interest in his family, and having aided the mother to get situations for her five other children, had defrayed her expenses back (with an infant in arms) to her native place in Rhode Island, according to her desire, and took the boy, of whom I spoke, to bring up, educate, and establish in business.

"At first my wife, though she admired the boy's beauty and his manners, which were very gentle, did not open all her heart to him, and had misgivings that in her state of mind she should be able to do by the boy as she ought. And one day, after he had been with us a few weeks, she said to me, 'What if William should not grow up a good man? Sometimes I feel, I know not why, that he will not. He is very "deep," and if his talents, as he grows up, should chance to take a wrong course, he might be a very bad man, and it would break my heart to think that we had brought him up in the place of our angel who is in heaven,' and she burst into tears, and I consoled her; but, sir, the terrible day which she seemed to then anticipate, has come, and her heart is broken indeed.

"I know, sir, you must lose your patience to hear me talk of these things, but though I am old in years in comparison with you, yet it is not years that makes me so weak to-day. I feel as if I were a hundred years old, and you must pardon my imbecilities."

I assured the old man that I was far from being impatient with his story, for I knew full well that he could never make me an intelligent narrative of the facts I should need to know, if his business proved of real importance, until he had delivered his mind of these special burdens; and so I waited patiently to the end of his story, which it took far more time to reach than I can afford in this narrative.

The young, adopted lad, William, it seems, enjoyed all the advantages of the village school, and of the preparatory academy in the shire town of the county in which the old man resided, and whither, at a distance of some twelve miles from his own home, the old man (taking his wife often) visited the lad at least once a week, and sometimes twice, especially if by any means the old gentleman could contrive to have a "business" excuse for going there, during the boy's whole course at the preparatory school, so great was his affection for him; and, finally, being well prepared, and giving high promise of becoming a great scholar, and a great man, the lad, or now well-grown young man, was sent off to college. During his first collegiate year he bore himself faultlessly, and achieved a high position in his class, in some branches of study being at the head. The old gentleman said that his own pride was never so flattered in all his life as when the boy came home at the end of the year and all the village was talking of the honors he had won. He said he felt a relief then, as if he had a staff well grown, and to grow still stronger and stronger in the coming years, upon which to lean in his own declining years—a young counsellor, whose judgment already good, would grow better and better.

The boy had always been good, courteous, and obliging to the old man and his wife; but now, at the end of his first collegiate year, he seemed to have grown still better, if possible. Vacation being passed in perfect happiness for that household, the old gentleman accompanied William back to college, the wife bidding them God-speed on their journey, with copious tears flooding her face. "Come back, William, just as good a boy as you now are, and I will try to be better to you than I have ever been," said she; and William bade her dry her tears (while his own blinded his eyes), told her that she had always been more than a mother to him, and assured her that he thought of her and his happy home a hundred times a day, and could not, he hoped, but grow better himself every time he thought of home.

"We thought," said the old man, "then, that that was the happiest day of our lives; and when I returned home, after seeing William back again in the college, we talked over, day after day, the happiness of the parting hour, and every letter we got from William, who always wrote once a week at least, prompted us to remember that 'holy day,' as we called it, and we talked it over and over.

"But the next collegiate year brought William home, with a different report about him. He was still forward in his classes, but during the winter term had begun to grow a little wild; had attended a dancing-school privately, against the rules of the college, and had begun to feel himself 'man enough to control his own conduct,' etc. Indeed, on account of the expression of a great degree of obstinacy and self-will, with not a little defiance of the professors on a certain occasion, when they had thought best to gently hint a sort of reproval of some act of his, William had come near being 'suspended,' as the phrase is, for a while; that is, dismissed from the college for a season, to return on conditions. But he was not suspended finally, and had come home still a member of the college. But he had had a taste of certain liberties, had learned to look upon some things, such as 'card-playing for fun,' and which he had been used to look upon with horror, as a foolish, sinful way of spending time, as not, after all, so very bad. But I need not recite these things; for his career was from the good, gently at first, and by slow steps to the bad—much like that of everybody else who has followed the like path. William did not finish his junior years, finding it convenient to withdraw from the college during the spring term (as he was, by the grace of the faculty, permitted to do, instead of being expelled, in consideration of the entreaties of his adopted father, the good old man, who had been sent for to confer with the faculty). William had been engaged, with a score of other students, in some mischief, which, though not seriously bad at first, led to a terrible fight between these students and the authorities of the college-town, or city, rather, in which William had drawn a pistol, and attempted to make use of it (as he always claimed, however, in strict defence of his life), against some of the opposing party. But the pistol, being fortunately snatched from his hands, no blood was shed. William would not acknowledge to the faculty that he had been wrong in drawing his pistol with the purpose of making bloody use of it, but, on the other hand, insisted that, under like circumstances, he would do the same again, in self-defence, as he claimed. The faculty would not yield, and permitted him, in conclusion, to withdraw. And William went home, a somewhat altered young man, but beloved by all the villagers about him, some of whom, however, sometimes said, there was 'a great deal of the "wild-horse" in him which has got to come out in some way, some time;' but they little thought what lay in the line of William's career."