Young Tegot now seemed to master himself by a great effort, and, motioning the workman back, he advanced, and, lifting the bag tenderly out into a more convenient position, he said solemnly, as if to himself, “I have long suspected something was wrong, and now I shall know.”
Then he examined the bag, and at length took from his pocket a knife and carefully cut open one side.
Despite the fact that he expected the revelation that now came, he started back, for the opening revealed a piece of cloth,—a coat, which even the town official could recollect to be the coat of the long-lost organist, Raoul Tegot, François’s father.
The young man stepped back and sank again into his seat, and the others, coming forward, laid the bag quite open, and drew forth a watch and an embroidered vest; in a pocket of the coat was found a purse. “Here is an odd treasure,” said one of the workmen, holding up a locket of dull gold.
François seized it and opened it. The color forsook his face and his eyes filled with tears. He simply said,—
“My mother.”
The town official now whispered to the surprised organ-builder, that the villanous Lacombe had killed poor Tegot on the morning of the trial, and had secreted the body in some unknown place and hidden the valuables here. Frightened by the fear of discovery, he had attempted to remove the treasures, had fallen into the pipe, and had thus met a horrible death.
“There is nothing secret,” said François, “but shall be revealed. Sin is its own detector, and its secrets cannot rest.”
The excitement among the townspeople was for many days even greater than it had been at the time of Tegot’s disappearance, and many and bitter were the reproaches heaped upon the wicked organist’s memory.
François was immediately chosen organist, and held the position during his entire life.