That very night Clarence tramped onward to another village, resolved to return no more to Oakdale. He had learned that his parents and his brother were comfortably settled there and apparently peaceful and happy, and he told himself that the knowledge was sufficient.
But he had not seen his mother’s face, and each hour and each day the yearning to do so grew stronger within him, until presently it made him falter, broke his resolution and caused him to turn back.
Fred, returning home from the disappointing duck hunt at Marsh Pond, was seen by Clarence, who suddenly decided to let his brother know that he still lived. The reader may imagine the state of mind into which this meeting between the brothers threw Fred Sage. It was this mental condition which caused his thoughts to wander in the football game that afternoon and made him responsible for much of the bad playing and many of the flukes which prevented the home team from piling up a bigger score in the earlier stages of the game, and thus encouraged the visitors to keep plugging with all the energy and aggressiveness they could work up, until eventually they swept Oakdale down in defeat.
For two nights Clarence Sage slept upon some blankets in the stable granary. After seeing and talking with Clarence several times, Fred decided that their father should be taken into the great secret—should be told that the boy he thought dead was still living.
“If I know father,” argued Fred, “and I think I do, it will do him a heap of good. On the other hand, I’m just as sure that it would be a big mistake to let mother know. She’d want you to stay near her, that she might be able to see you, and she would live in constant terror lest the truth become known and you were taken back to prison. She has struggled hard to forget you in a way, Clarence—that is, to put you out of her mind so that she might cease to brood over that dreadful thing.”
Clarence agreed with Fred, and thus it came about that on Sunday old Andrew Sage came to know the amazing truth that his unfortunate son still lived. While Fred entertained his mother in the house the bewildered father talked with Clarence in the stable.
At first old Andrew had thought that his wife must be told, but it was not difficult to convince him that this would be unwise. He spent as much time as possible talking with Clarence, who told him briefly the story of his experiences since escaping from prison, and together they laid plans for the future. Only once did Clarence declare to his father his innocence of the crime for which he had been convicted. Mr. Sage checked him promptly, stating positively that such a protestation was unnecessary, as he had never permitted himself for a single instant to entertain any doubts upon that point.
Clarence thought of going away Sunday night, but he had no money in his pocket, and, learning this, his father practically commanded him to wait until Monday, when he would draw from the bank and furnish the wanderer with funds, which might be taken as a loan and repaid when convenient. Thus it happened that Clarence lingered, finally to be captured as one of the bank robbers by Constable Hubbard.
As he had expected, when he hurried into the house to quiet her apprehensions, Fred found his mother much disturbed by the presence of the armed men whom she had seen through the windows.
“What does it mean, my boy?” she asked, her face quite pale. “Why are they here?”