MYSTERIOUS FINDINGS
Monday morning Elder Craigmile walked to the bank with the stubborn straightening of the knees at each step that always betokened irritation with him. Neither of the young men had appeared at breakfast, a matter peculiarly annoying to him. Peter Junior he had not expected to see, as, owing to his long period of recovery, he had naturally been excused from rigorous rules, but his nephew surely might have done that much out of courtesy, where he had always been treated as a son, to promote the orderliness of the household. It was unpardonable in the young man to lie abed in the morning thus when a guest in that home. It was a mistake of his wife to allow Peter Junior a night key. It induced late hours. He would take it from him. And as for Richard––there was no telling what habits he had fallen into during these years of wandering. What if he had come home to them with a clear skin and laughing eye! Was not the “heart of man deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”? And was not Satan abroad in the world laying snares for the feet of wandering youths?
It was still early enough for many of the workmen to be on their way to their day of labor with their tin dinner pails, and among them Mr. Walters passed him, swinging his pail with the rest, although he was master of his own foundry 140 and employed fifty men. He had always gone early to work, and carried his tin pail when he was one of the workmen, and he still did it from choice. He, too, was a Scotchman of a slightly different class from the Elder, it is true, but he was a trustee of the church, and a man well respected in the community.
He touched his hat to the Elder, and the Elder nodded in return, but neither spoke a word. Mr. Walters smiled after he was well past. “The man has a touch of the indigestion,” he said.
When the Elder entered his front door at noon, his first glance was at the rack in the corner of the hall, where, on the left-hand hook, Peter Junior’s coat and hat had hung when he was at home, ever since he was a boy. They were not there. The Elder lifted his bushy brows one higher than the other, then drew them down to their usual straight line, and walked on into the dining room. His wife was not there, but in a moment she entered, looking white and perturbed.
“Peter!” she said, going up to her husband instead of taking her place opposite him, “Peter!” She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “I haven’t seen the boys this morning. Their beds have not been slept in.”
“Quiet yourself, lass, quiet yourself. Sit and eat in peace. ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners,’ but when doom strikes him, he’ll maybe experience a change of heart.” The Elder spoke in a tone not unkindly. He seated himself heavily.
Then his wife silently took her place at the table and he bowed his head and repeated the grace to which she had listened three times a day for nearly thirty years, only that 141 this time he added the request that the Lord would, in his “merciful kindness, strike terror to the hearts of all evildoers and turn them from their way.”
When the silent meal was ended, Hester followed her husband to the door and laid a detaining hand on his arm. He stood and looked down on that slender white hand as if it were something that too sudden a movement would joggle off, and she did not know that it was as if she had laid her hand on his very heart. “Peter, tell me what happened yesterday afternoon. You should tell me, Peter.”
Then the Elder did an unwonted thing. He placed his hand over hers and pressed it harder on his arm, and after an instant’s pause he stooped and kissed her on the forehead.