"Ha!" and he wagged his head. "So that's the way the past has seemed to you, eh?"
He said no more; but Janice wondered what the matter was with Elder Concannon. He was so seldom demonstrative.
CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS
Nelson Haley was not at church that Sunday. He was seen to ride away with Walky Dexter early in the morning and they took the lower Middletown road. When they returned late in the afternoon they assured each other that they had accomplished much.
They had prepared the way for Janice when she should go to the seminary on Monday—and more. It seemed to Janice that week as though the girls had never before been so nice to her. One of the instructors kept her in the office it was true when she arrived on Monday, over a really trivial matter, while the principal was addressing the student body; but the subject of the principal's address did not interest Janice, she learned later, she being only a day pupil. In fact she was merely taking a postgraduate course in certain studies.
Nor did she imagine that the editor of the Middletown Courier went to his office that Monday morning and "killed" a two-column news feature he had planned for the front page, as well as an editorial and a certain "intimate note" of neighborhood gossip under the heading of "Polktown Activities."
Nelson Haley was not omnipotent. He could not reach everybody or foretell all combinations of events that might reveal to Janice her father's peril. But he had done his best. The Weekly Courier would not mention Mexican matters in its Thursday's issue. Meanwhile Nelson, with Uncle Jason and Mr. Middler, the pastor of the Polktown Union Church, as a self-appointed committee, endeavored to get the truth from the Border regarding the uprising in the Companos District and particularly the facts of the situation at the Alderdice Mine.
Janice Day's cheerfulness was almost uncanny. She had determined to be cheerful and optimistic about the Day homestead because she knew that her uncle and aunt were so cast down. She was not at all surprised therefore by their frequently solemn countenances and their whispering in corners together.
When she found Aunt 'Mira in tears she comforted her, believing that it was because of her husband's troubles that the woman wept. That Marty should wear a cloud of gloom most of the time merely proved how deeply the boy had been stirred by his father's trouble.