“Sit down,” he said. “Now, no more of this! I want your clearest head—your help.”
“Yes, yes, Archie,” she said. “I will try. I—oh, I couldn’t help it! Don’t scold me.”
His eyes filled. “No, dear love, not I. But keep still. I want to look. This is a mere vulgar, brutal theft. Wait a moment, can you?”
“Yes, but don’t be long.”
He walked back again to the little grave, and carefully examined the place. It was broken and battered by large footmarks, and these led away toward the low stone wall, and were lost in the underbrush beyond the broken fence-rail on the far side of the unused road. He saw that the break in the rail was recent. At last he returned to his wife.
“The grave, dear, is not disturbed. Some fool has stolen the stone. Come with me; I want to go through the drift yonder, and I do not want to leave you alone.”
She stood up, and followed him around the church, and back to where he had found the rail broken. “Ah, here again is a footmark,” he said. At the river he walked along the margin, and at length came upon the place where a dugout had been drawn up and where were other footprints in the wet clay margin.
“It is very simple,” he said. “We shall soon know. But why any man should do such a thing I cannot imagine.”
“He ought to be killed,” said our quiet Margaret.
“That will do for the present,” he said, and then called to his men to drop down from the landing where he had left them. In a minute or two they were at the shore.