The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

“Ah! you’ll not find it there,” observed Mrs. Pope, as the village cabinet-maker applied a key, the wards of which happened to fit those of the locks in question. “She kept her money in the lowest draw of all. I’ve seen her take the stocking out, first and last, at least a dozen times.”

The lower draw was opened, accordingly. It contained female apparel, and a goodly store of such articles as were suited to the wants of a respectable woman in the fourth or fifth of the gradations into which all society so naturally, and unavoidably, divides itself. But there was no stocking full of darns, no silver, no gold. Mrs. Pope’s busy and nimble fingers were thrust hastily into an inner corner of the drawer, and a silk dress was unceremoniously opened, that having been the precise receptacle of the treasure as she had seen it last bestowed.

“It’s gone!” exclaimed the woman. “Somebody must have taken it!”

A great deal was now thought to be established. The broken skulls, and the missing money, went near to establish a case of murder and robbery, in addition to the high crime of arson. Men, who had worn solemn and grave countenances all that morning, now looked excited and earnest. The desire for a requiting justice was general and active, and the dead became doubly dear, by means of their wrongs.

All this time Dr. McBrain had been attending, exclusively, to the part of the subject that most referred to his own profession. Of the fractures in the two skulls, he was well assured, though the appearance of the remains was such as almost to baffle investigation. Of another important fact he was less certain. While all he heard prepared him to meet with the skeletons of a man and his wife, so far as he could judge, in the imperfect state in which they were laid before him, the bones were those of two females.

“Did you know this Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Coroner?” enquired the physician, breaking into the more regular examination with very little ceremony; “or was he well known to any here?”

The coroner had no very accurate knowledge of the deceased, though every one of the jurors had been well acquainted with him. Several had known him all their lives.

“Was he a man of ordinary size?” asked the doctor.

“Very small. Not taller than his wife, who might be set down as quite a tall old lady.”

It often happens in Europe, especially in England, that the man and his wife are so nearly of a height as to leave very little sensible difference in their statures; but it is a rare occurrence in this country. In America, the female is usually delicate, and of a comparatively small frame, while the average height of man is something beyond that of the European standard. It was a little out of the common way, therefore, to meet with a couple so nearly of a size, as these remains would make Goodwin and his wife to have been.