Once he drew her on her sled through a drifted place. And once she found a rose upon her desk and looking up saw his eyes upon her suddenly averted and knew he had put it there. But he never came again into their intimate family circle as he had done that wonderful day in the woods. His family moved to another part of the town, and she seldom saw him, yet they always spoke when they met, and something would flash from eye to eye that was different from an ordinary acquaintance. They could not forget that day and that holy cathedral of the woods where they had companioned so richly together.
She had not seen him often through the years, but he had come to Aunt Mary’s funeral, and at the cemetery stood close to the open grave looking down with bared head as if he loved the one who was being laid to rest. A handsome fellow with a distinguished look about him, and that wonderful wistfulness in his eyes that had not lost the child look and could still flash a smile that lit the hearts of those who saw it.
That! And then to see him there in the dark—at a gruesome task of some sort, and to have seen his eyes as she asked him what he had been doing!
She had not spoken to him in years. Their sole communication had been through smiles till she asked him that question wrung from her lips at cost of pain. Somehow her words seemed to strike a blow at the dear past and shatter something that had been most precious.
And now she had gone over it again in the watches of the night the pain was still there. He had somehow gone wrong. She had to admit that to her loyal heart. Perhaps he had been wrong all the time, a bad, wild boy. She had sometimes heard hints of that floating about the village but had not believed it. She had clung to that day when they had read Under the Lilacs together, and then heard the story of the blind man and gone out together again into life with the blessing of Jesus resting upon them. She could not bear to think that the boy who had been so gentle and kind, so interested and happy in that sweet, simple place, could have been bad all the time, and only dropped out of his regular life for the day just out of curiosity. He must be right and true somehow. And if he had been doing wrong he must be sorry perhaps, for he had looked ashamed. She could not get away from that. She covered her face with her hands to pray and found there were tears upon her cheeks, and then she prayed with all her heart, “Oh, Jesus, go and find him and make him understand. Open his eyes that he may see and sin no more.”
About that time a man under cover of the darkness came down the road from the Meadow Brook Cemetery and stole into Julia Hartshorn’s gate, and silently over the grass to the hammock under the trees; pausing a moment to look furtively up at the dark house, he stooped and felt all over that hammock. He had passed the house that day, slowly, in his automobile and he was sure he had seen the form of an object sagging in the middle. He had observed it most minutely. He was come now to find out. It might give him no clue even if he found it, but he was here.
His hand moved carefully and came in contact with a book, yes—and something soft like cloth, a handkerchief with a faint smell of lavender drifting from it. He slipped them in his pocket and went silently away into the night on rubber shod feet that made no sound, and after he was gone for a season, came another shadow, stealing as silently into the yard and up to the hammock. It is doubtful if Julia Hartshorn and her niece would have ever recovered from the fright if they had known what went on in their yard that night. But they were slumbering deeply and did not even see the tiny spot of light that flashed over the hammock, and down upon the ground, bringing out in clear relief a scrap of paper with writing across it. A hand reached for it, and again the flashlight focused for a scrutiny. “oyce Radw” the paper read and that was all. It was torn on all its edges, and evidently a part of a larger writing. The man searched again, but could find nothing more. So he stole away as he had come, but he kept the paper safely for future reference.
CHAPTER XVI
When Joyce awoke the next morning it was with a feeling of trepidation lest she had overslept and would not be able to accomplish all that she must before twelve o’clock.
She hurried around anxiously, folding her newspaper bed into an innocent-looking pile, putting away her things carefully for any possible scrutiny, and eating a hasty breakfast of crackers, cheese and what was left of her bottle of milk.