Harry, remembering what he had seen the night before, looked up with mingled feelings as he saw the rather stiff and stately form of Squire Turner enter the door.
The squire, though not a good-looking man, was always carefully dressed. He regarded it as due to his position, and as no one else in the village except the minister and doctor were scrupulous on this point, he inspired a certain respect on this very account. So now, as he entered the store, in a decorous suit of black, with a stiff standing-collar rising above a glossy satin stock, swinging in his hand a gold-headed cane, those present looked towards him with considerable deference.
“Well, squire,” said Sam Tilden, “you met with a misfortun’ last night.”
“Yes,” said the squire, deliberately; “there was a clean sweep of the old house. There isn’t much left of it.”
“Have you any idea who sot it on fire?” queried the old man.
“No,” said the squire. “I came in to see if any one here could throw any light upon it.”
There was one present who could have thrown some light upon it, and if Squire Turner had chanced to look behind the counter he might have noticed a peculiar expression in the eyes of Harry Raymond, who was watching him fixedly. The fact is, Harry was very much perplexed in his mind in regard to the occurrence. Why a gentleman should steal out of his house in disguise at the dead of night to set fire to his own property was a question which was invested with not a little mystery. But before the conversation was finished he began to understand it better.
“It must have been sot afire,” continued Sam Tilden, positively. “There wasn’t nobody livin’ in it.”
“No; it had been empty for several months.”
“You haint got no suspicions, I s’pose?”