Joshua, though slow, was not without shrewdness, and he had not only kept the old house where the O’Mores had lived securely locked by day, until when, upon the selling of the furniture, it should again return to the Slocums from whom it was rented, but at Mrs. Lane’s suggestion he had Nellis, his oldest son, sleep there at night, as she said, “To keep folks whom I’ll not name from prowlin’.”
Joshua looked to the sale of the furniture to at least pay the last quarter’s rent due. By a strange happening the afternoon before the vendue was to take place, as he was about to drive up to the old house at the cross-roads to make a final thorough search in closets, drawers, and the old-time chimney nooks for the missing papers, a passer-by, hurrying in the same direction, called out to him: “There’s a fire up cemetery hill way; smoke’s comin’ over the hickory woods. Maybe Dr. Jedd’s big hay barn or Slocum’s old farm, both bein’ in a plum line from here.” When, sharply whipping up the old mare, much to her astonishment, he hurried to the place, he not only found that it was the old farm-house hopelessly ablaze from roof to cellar, but Abiram Slocum appearing a few moments later by the road that ran north of the place, flew into either a real or well-acted rage, shaking his fist and calling: “It’s that there hulking boy, Nellis, o’ yourn, that has done me this mischief. Must ’a’ smoked his pipe in bed or left his candle lighted until it burned down, for it’s plain to be seen by the way the roof’s ketched, the fire started upstairs and smouldered around all day until it bust out everywheres to onct.”
“I reckon yer insured,” said Joshua, dryly, taking little account of what he said, as he began to realize that the fire had put an end forever to the discovery of the papers that might have brought good luck to Bird, as well as destroyed a part of the slender property.
“A trifle—a mere trifle—not the cost of the wood in the house, let alone the labour at present rates. I could hev rented the place tew teachers for a summer cottage for twenty a month, and I intended buyin’ in the furniture so to do. If”—and he drew his mean features together, and then spread them out again in a spasm of indignation—“law was just, you’d ought to make it up to me, Joshua Lane,—that you had.”
But when he found that the few neighbours who had gathered were not sympathetic, and only seemed to regret the fire on account of the O’More furniture, he disappeared, and, strangely enough, later on no one could tell in which direction he went or if he had gone afoot, on horseback, or in the yellow buckboard in which he was wont to drive about to harry his tenants and surprise his farm hands if they but paused to straighten their backs.
When Joshua told of the fire at the supper-table, Mrs. Lane fairly snorted with indignation, saying, “Firstly, Nellis didn’t smoke last night, bein’ out o’ tobacco and leavin’ his pipe on the chimneypiece, where it is now, and secondly he asked me for a candle; and then, the Lockwood boys comin’ along, and offerin’ to walk up with him, he went off while I was lookin’ for the store-closet key which had fallen off its nail, and clean through the bottom of the clock”—(the inside of the long body of the tall clock being the place where the Lane family’s keys lived, each on its own nail).
“This morning when he came down home to breakfast he mentioned it, and said it didn’t matter because the moon was so bright he undressed by light of it, Bill Lockwood stopping up there with him for company’s sake.
“A trifle of insurance indeed! and all hope of Bird bein’ righted gone! Joshua Lane, do you know what I think and believe?” And Lauretta Ann jumped up so suddenly that her ample proportions struck the tea-tray edge and an avalanche of cups and saucers covered the floor.
“Your thoughts and beliefs ’ll soon fill a book, big as the dictionary and doubtless be worth as much,” said Joshua, pausing a second with a potato speared on his fork, while he gave his wife a stern, silencing look that was so rare that whenever she saw it, she gave heed at once, “but in this here matter I’d advise you to keep ’em good and close to yourself. We’ve got plenty ahead to shoulder this summer, besides which if papers had been found, ’tain’t likely any lawyer hereabouts would risk taking the matter without money to back him, and ’Biram Slocum to face.”