"I dunno whether my matchmaking is so tarnal bad, after all," he reflected. "She was scare't Ralph was in trouble because she does care for him—just as sure as aigs is aigs."
Perhaps, too, it was better for Lorna that she had to give her attention just then to the preparation of a more dainty repast for the invalid than Tobias could have furnished.
"Poor Miss Heppy!" she sighed.
Her thoughts reverted again to Ralph. So, he was not poor. He did not deserve the pity she had been wasting on him. Or was it wasted?
The fact that he had possibly not even the reason of poverty for entering into that scheme to rob the Clinkerport Bank did not, after all, clear him of suspicion. Lorna could not—as Tobias Bassett did—flout the evidence of the address book and the penknife. The atmosphere was not immediately cleared of doubt.
The young woman did not know much about judicial procedure or the laws governing circumstantial evidence; but she was quite sure that Ralph Endicott would have to explain away the discoveries at the bank that pointed so directly to his participation in the burglary.
And the curious thing he had done in leaving town! How explain that mystery?
He had evidently shipped his trunk and taken the train himself for New Bedford; yet he had returned to Clinkerport during the evening. At daybreak he was walking the railroad track at Peehawket Cove. How had he got there from Clinkerport?
His putting to sea with the avowed intention of hailing the banker Nelly G. capped the mystery. Why had he not gone on with his baggage to New Bedford and boarded the fishing schooner there?
"And why? And why? And why?" murmured Lorna at length. "I might ask myself these questions from now till doomsday and be none the wiser."