But he began now to think that possibly he had been too strict with Joe. Had he not left too little room for independence of thought and action? Had he tried to smother those boyish instincts of freedom and fair play that go, no less than other qualities, to make up the man?
His grief was mingled thus with a degree of remorse; but he still believed that it would not be wise to go out in search of Joe, offering terms of forgiveness. The boy’s offence had been too great for that. His own salvation depended on his coming back voluntarily in repentance and humiliation, with a full confession of his fault.
The hot days of July went by, and the hotter days of August. The summer tasks went on as of old about the farm, but the old place had never before been so silent and lonely.
The lines on Mr. Gaston’s face grew deeper. He went about with shoulders bent, as if bearing some heavy burden.
Joe’s mother, pitifully silent and anxious-eyed, not venturing to question the wisdom or oppose the will of her husband, went every day to place fresh flowers in Joe’s room. Every night she sat and looked up the long road to the east till darkness came and swallowed it, hoping, waiting, and yearning for the sight of her returning boy.
Meantime there had been, after a long delay, a movement in the community to look a little more deeply into the matter of the disappearance of Joe and the horse. Squire Bidwell, who happened to be at once the local justice of the peace and a good friend of Joe Gaston, found it hard to believe that the boy who had been an apt and receptive pupil in his Sunday school had proved to be a common thief.
The squire, moreover, had been Farmer Gaston’s friend from boyhood, and he saw with great pain the havoc which Joe’s disappearance, and his father’s belief in his guilt, was making in the family. He resolved to do what he could to probe the matter to the bottom.
He called together three or four of his most prudent townsmen, and set them at work making inquiries and doing a sort of detective work. Presently it was found that a farmer in an adjoining town had, on the evening of the day after Joe’s disappearance, while driving a cow from pasture, seen a rough-looking man ride a gray horse out of a wood-lot, and had found the place where the man and the horse had apparently passed several hours, and eaten a meal or two.
This clew was followed up. Still farther on other traces of the real thief were found. He had now passed quite beyond any jurisdiction of Squire Bidwell, but the authorities were notified of what had been learned, and were on the alert.
Callipers was well known through previous misdeeds. The man who had been seen answered his description. For a long time he evaded pursuit; but at last, as we have seen, he was apprehended, the very day after he had turned Old Charlie over to Rosencamp on the canal.