“I don’t believe you; I believe you’ve been killin’ one of your master’s hogs—that’s what you’ve been at.”
But as this did not concern him, he did not wait to inquire further, and so, turning on his heel, he strode off.
The hog-feeder, too, hastening away, took the shortest path back to his cart.
The deserted barnyard lay silent in the white moonlight when the little cart creaked through the gate; but up at the “great house” there were lights and movements where the family watched the coming of the boys.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday passed without tidings, and the hope that they had been caught by the rising water and imprisoned upon some isolated knoll had been abandoned after the swamps had been searched in every direction. To add to the grief of the household, the master, already enfeebled, now lay prostrated in a condition that almost forbade hope.
Upon Sunday the waters began to abate, fences again appeared, and patches of drowned corn showed themselves above the wastes of water, to the no small joy of the flocks of blackbirds which chattered and fluttered amongst them.
Mr. Jones, tired of the loneliness of his water-girt home, made his way to the meeting-house, more for the sake of a gossip with some of the neighbors than for the day’s preaching, and it was there that he first heard the startling news of the unaccountable disappearance of Squire Brace’s nephews.
In the excitement, each man was eager to advance his own theory. The discussion ended, however, in the general opinion that their canoe had been swamped in the freshet and the boys drowned, until a newcomer asserted that the canoe, with Phil’s overcoat still in it, had been found tied up at the Vine Ridge landing, and that their guns had been discovered hidden in the leaves at no great distance in the swamp.
Upon hearing this, Mr. Jones could but call to mind his meeting with the hog-feeder, his strange behavior, and the blood upon the ground, and he at once jumped to the conclusion that old Jerry had been at least a party to some foul deed. His suspicions, once made known, became certainties, and the whole party, hastily mounting their horses, rode off to the nearest justice, their convictions gaining ground so rapidly that, ere the house of the justice was reached, poor, simple old Jerry, the most harmless of God’s creatures, had become in their estimation a villain of the deepest dye.
Upon this identical Sunday morning the old hog-feeder betook himself to the little plantation church, whose bell, with cracked clamor, gave warning that preaching was about to begin.