The stranger in Santoine's house—the man whom no one knew and who had given his name as Philip Eaton—in all the reports was proclaimed the murderer. The first reports in the papers had assailed him; the stories of the afternoon papers became a public clamour for his quick capture, trial and execution. The newspapers had sent the idle and the sensation seekers, with the price of carfare to the country place, to join the pack roaming the woods for Eaton. Harriet, standing at a window, could see them beating through the trees beyond the house; and as she watched them, wild, hot anger against them seized her. She longed to rush out and strike them and shame them and drive them away.
The village police station called her frequently on the telephone to inform her of the progress of the hunt. Twice, they told her, Eaton had been seen, but both times he had avoided capture; they made no mention of his having been fired upon. Avery, in charge of the pursuit in the field, was away all day; he came in only for a few moments at lunch time and then Harriet avoided him. As the day progressed, the pursuit had been systematized; the wooded spots which were the only ones that Eaton could have reached unobserved from the places where he had been seen, had been surrounded. They were being searched carefully one by one. Through the afternoon, Harriet kept herself informed of this search; there was no report that Eaton had been seen again, but the places where he could be grew steadily fewer.
The day had grown toward dusk, when a servant brought her word that her father wished to see her. Harriet went up to him fearfully. The blind man seemed calm and quiet; a thin, square packet lay on the bed beside him; he held it out to her without speaking.
She snatched it in dread; the shape of the packet and the manner in which it was fastened told her it must be a photograph. "Open it," her father directed.
She snapped the string and tore off the paper.
She stared at it, and her breath left her; she held it and stared and stared, sobbing now as she breathed. The photograph was of Hugh, but it showed him as she had never seen or known him; the even, direct eyes, the good brow, the little lift of the head were his; he was younger in the picture—she was seeing him when he was hardly more than a boy. But it was a boy to whom something startling, amazing, horrible had happened, numbing and dazing him so that he could only stare out from the picture in frightened, helpless defiance. That oppression which she had felt in him had just come upon him; he was not yet used to bearing what had happened; it seemed incredible and unbearable to him; she felt instinctively that he had been facing, when this picture was taken, that injustice which had changed him into the self-controlled, watchful man that she had known.
So, as she contrasted this man with the boy that he had been, her love and sympathy for him nearly overpowered her. She clutched the picture to her, pressed it against her cheek; then suddenly conscious that her emotion might be audible to her father, she quickly controlled herself.
"What is it you want to know, Father?" she asked.
"You have answered me already what I was going to ask, my dear," he said to her quietly.
"What, Father?"