"Sh!" the boy said, his face suddenly displaying all the fear and anxiety he had been hiding.
His father took his bedtime pipe from his lips and stared. "What ever is it's got you?" he asked.
The boy leaned over the table. Like conspirators, with their heads close together, the three talked in whispers. After Aunt Almira's first involuntary cry of horror, which she smothered at once, their voices never reached a key that could have made them audible ten feet away.
Meanwhile the schoolmaster and Walky Dexter were in close consultation. Nelson had made no mistake when he took the expressman into the plot. Walky was by nature a chatterer and a gossip, but he would have cut off his right hand rather than hurt Janice Day. While Janice made ready for bed plans were forming to hide from her as long as possible—until the newspaper story could be verified at least—that which had come over the telegraph wires from Mexico.
The girl was less troubled by fears for her father's safety than she had been for a long time. It was of Uncle Jason's trouble she thought. And she was quite sure her father would be able to help his brother considerably in straightening out the difficulty that confronted Jason Day.
It had been figured out just what it would cost to renew the notes and pay interest on them, if the bank would allow Mr. Day to do that. Over seven hundred dollars per year! An enormous sum for Uncle Jason to contemplate—while the principal would hang over him like a threatening cloud. The interest money alone was more than he could easily earn over and above the family's living expenses.
He had got into the toils of the cunning Hotchkiss through lending the storekeeper a small sum at eight per cent, in the beginning and being paid promptly. The bank carried the notes for six per cent, of course.
The morrow was Sunday. Janice went her usual calm way. People seemed rather nicer to her than usual, but their attitude did not arouse her suspicions in the least. At church there seemed to be more groups than usual both before and after service who whispered together. Mr. Middler, the pastor, who loved Janice as he might his own daughter, added a warmer pressure to his handclasp. Mrs. Middler kissed her several times, and Janice thought with some surprise that the affectionate woman had been crying. Elder Concannon, that stern and bewhiskered patriarch who had once looked upon Janice Day and her ideas as the very leaven of unrighteousness in the community, strode over to the girl and rested his hands upon her shoulders to make her look up at him.
"Ha!" he said. "Just as brave as ever, are you? You're not fearing the future, my girl?"
"How can I when the past has been so lovely?" she asked him soberly.