Methodically, mechanically, his mind went back over the days when he had gone to school with Jed Conway––the same Jed The Red whom the whole town was now welcoming as “our own Jeddy,” and the longer he pondered the greater the problem became.
It was hard to understand. From his point of view comprehension was impossible, at that instant. For 73 in those earlier days, when anybody had ever mentioned Jed Conway at all, it had been only to describe him as “good for nothing,” or something profanely worse. Young Denny remembered him vividly as a big, freckle-faced, bow-legged boy with red bristly hair––the biggest boy in the school––who never played but what he cheated, and always seemed able to lie himself out of his thievery.
But most vividly of all, he recalled that day when Jed Conway had disappeared from the village between sundown and dawn and failed to return. That was the same day they discovered the shortage in the old wooden till at Benson’s corner store. And now Jed Conway had come home, or at least his fame had found its way back, and even Old Jerry, whipping madly toward the village to share in his reflected glory, had, for all the perfection of his “system,” failed to leave the very bundle of mail which he had come to deliver.
For a long time Young Denny sat and tried to straighten it out in his brain––and failed entirely. It had grown very dark––too dark for him to make out the words upon it––when he reached into the pocket of his gray flannel shirt and drew out the card which he had found lying upon the kitchen floor that previous Saturday night, after he had lighted Dryad Anderson on her way home through the thickets. But he did not need, or even attempt, to read it.
“And it took me a month,” he said aloud to the empty air before him, “almost a month to save fifteen dollars.”
He rose at the words, stiffly, for the chill air had tightened his muscles, and stood a moment indecisively contemplating the lights which were beginning to glimmer through the dusk in the hollow, before he, too, took the long road to the village down which Old Jerry had rattled a scant hour or two before.