CHAPTER XX

HOW THE SHOES AND STOCKINGS CAME HOME.

MRS. CHATFORD met her husband at the door, her kind face full of motherly solicitude. “Do tell me, what is the matter! _He_ is in the sitting-room. O Jack! I hope you haven’t been getting into any serious trouble.”

They found the squire sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair, with his horn-headed cane between his knees, and his hat and an odd-looking bundle on the floor beside him.

“What is all this about, squire?” the deacon demanded, as poor Jack was brought in, face to face with his grim accuser. “Haven’t you got through persecuting this boy? I felt that your treatment of him yesterday was wholly unwarrantable,—tyrannical and unjust; and though I thought a little differently of it, after my talk with your nephew last night, still I am not satisfied, and I sha’n’t be, till you have done the right thing. That he said you would do; but this don’t look like it. What great crime has Jack committed, that you should send an officer of the law after him?”

“You know nothing of what you are sayin’!” replied Peternot. “If you stan’ up for the boy arter I’ve made my statements, you’re not the man I take you for. I believe you to be a respecter of the laws, and no friend of rascality. If you don’t believe what I say, there’s my nephew out there in the wagon, ready to corroborate; and if you won’t credit our words, peradventur’ you’ll be convinced by this.”

He took up the odd-looking bundle from the floor, untied the corners of the coarse plaid handkerchief that enclosed it, and pulled out a pair of stockings, which he held up and shook before the eyes of the wondering group.

“Do ye know them stockin’s, Mis’ Chatford?”

“Why—sure—they—they are Jack’s stockings!” said the good woman, sadly puzzled to know how they had come into Peternot’s possession.

“And them shoes,—does anybody recognize ’em?”

“They’re Jack’s shoes!” exclaimed Phin, having taken a near view,—“his Sunday pair!”

“Now for this hat,” said the squire, holding it up on the end of his cane, “whose hat is it? Anybody know the hat?”

“I believe that and the other things all belong to Jack,” said the deacon. “What is the mystery? Come to the point at once! Jack, what is it? Why don’t you speak? Have you lost your tongue?”

The evidence against him appeared so overwhelming, and he really seemed to himself so guilty,—not because he had taken the money, but because he had made use of such means and such companions in accomplishing his object,—that poor Jack could not yet utter an intelligible word in self-defence. He was faltering out some weak denial or excuse, when Peternot interrupted him:—

“If this ain’t enough, pull off the shoes he has on and look at his feet. If you don’t find some marks of rough treatment about the ankles, I miss my calkelation.” Sellick placed the culprit in a chair, and began to take off his shoes.

“The mystery is no mystery, Neighbor Chatford,” the squire went on. “My house was broke into and robbed last night. I ketched one of the thieves by the heels as he was jumpin’ from the winder, and these stockin’s come off in my hands, as he got away; which he did by the help of his accomplices, though not till his feet and shins got some hard rubs on the winder-sill, as ye can see there now!”—Sellick at that moment holding up one of Jack’s legs, variegated with black-and-blue marks and bloody scratches, to the view of his horrified friends.

“I found the hat and shoes under the winder, when I run out arter the burglars. I looked agin with a lantern, and found tracks too big for the shoes, showing he had older confederates. He had two or three with him, at least. I’m glad to learn that Moses is away, so he couldn’t ’a’ been one on ’em; and Phineas, his mother tells me, was in bed by eight o’clock.”

“Jack!” said the deacon, fixing a terrible look on the boy.

“I haven’t robbed his house!” Jack broke forth, vehemently. “I only took what was my own. I took the money, which he had robbed me of before!”

“Broke into his house for it!”

“I got in.”

“Who helped you?”

“I can’t tell. It wouldn’t be fair for me to tell.”

“Where is the money?” demanded the squire.

“I can’t tell that, either. It was my money, and I took it. And I did only what your nephew, who knows so much about the law, advised me to do, and what Mr. Chatford himself said I would have a right to do.”

The deacon, who was inclined to condemn the boy’s fault all the more severely because he had taken his part before, regarded him with stern astonishment and displeasure.

“Did I ever say you would have a right to go to housebreaking, to get possession of what you claimed?—Don’t think, Squire, that I for a moment encouraged the boy to any such course. I didn’t approve your course, I tell you frankly. I thought you ought to have used different means for carrying your point. But I don’t uphold him. I told him expressly and repeatedly to let the matter drop until this morning, when I would see you about it.”

“You said I would be justified in taking the money wherever I could lay hands on it!” cried Jack, now fully roused to speak in his own behalf.

“Boy! Jack!” replied the deacon, regarding him with a look of mingled amazement, grief, and stern reprobation. “Take care what you say! Don’t make the matter worse by lying about it.”

“You said so—to—to Mrs. Pipkin!” said Jack, trying to remember what he seemed to be trying to invent.

“Did I say anything of the kind to you? Give the boy the benefit of it, if I did,” said the deacon, turning to Mrs. Pipkin.

“I didn’t hear you,” replied that lady, precisely. “You didn’t say as much as I _hoped_ you would say; for you knew I hadn’t words to express my opinion of Squire Peternot’s conduct.”

“Good!” said Mr. Pipkin, in a low but earnest voice, from the kitchen door. “I’m glad you said that!”

“And I shall say more, before the matter is settled!” said Mrs. Pipkin, compressing her thin lips. “For a man like Squire Peternot to come over here, and have Jack taken up for carrying off the money, no matter how he got it, is a sin and a shame! One of the richest farmers in town, and a member of the church! I believe you’d follow a penny rolling down hill to the very edge of Tophet, and burn your fingers getting it out!”

“Good agin, by hokey!” said Mr. Pipkin, at the door.

“Silence!” said the deacon, authoritatively. “Abuse is no argument. I’m trying to find out what I really said to give Jack encouragement in his iniquity, or to expose his lying.”

“Perhaps it was what Mrs. Pipkin said; he may have got it turned about a little,” said Mrs. Chatford, anxiously trying to shield the miserable culprit.

“No, it wasn’t!” Jack maintained stoutly. “He said it. I didn’t hear him, but Phin did; Phin came out when I was milking and told me.”

All eyes were now turned upon Phin; and—either because he had intentionally deceived Jack, or because, which is more probable, having confounded what Mrs. Pipkin said with what his father said, he was afraid to confess the blunder and assume his share of the responsibility—that treacherous-hearted youngster put on an air of outraged innocence, and exclaimed loudly, “O, I never said such a thing! I never said a word to him about it! Hope to die this minute if I did!”

“You did! you know you did!” And Jack, driven to desperation, advanced, shaking his fist at Phin, and passionately accusing him of falsehood.

“That will do,” said Deacon Chatford. “I’ve nothing more to say. His trying to get out of the scrape by lying, and shifting the blame first on to me and then on to somebody else, seems to me worse than the thing itself. He must take the consequences!”