Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/408

A PAINFUL uncertainty filled Abner Teeftallow as to whether or not he should attend the funeral services of his former employer and of his, perhaps, former friend. The young man was torn between a desire to be with Adelaide in this moment of great shock that had stricken her life, and his fealty to his foster-parents. Mixed pitifully with these emotions was a fear of what the villagers would say about him. In his shaken condition he dreaded the tyranny of the massed spite and unintelligence of the village; the rancour of the spiritual mob.

Mrs. Sandage no doubt divined her foster-son's dilemma, for presently she came to his door and looked in.

"Abner," she said in a colourless voice, "I believe I would go on over to the church if I was you. Adelaide—"

She broke off, pressing her lips together and disarranging her teeth, while her eyes filled with tears. Then she whispered, "You—haven't heard anything from—Florence?"

She meant news concerning the bloodhounds.

Abner shook his head silently and stood looking at her without any words to offer; she turned helplessly back to her own room.

Mrs. Sandage's advice decided the man. He finished putting on the serge suit which he kept for Sundays, and presently went out into the wintry sunshine of the street.

The keenest wound in his heart was for Adelaide. He knew her passion, her idolatry of her father, and now—this terrible end. . . . His chest quivered and the needle of repressed sobs stuck in his throat.

As for his own wrongs at the hands of Railroad Jones, if indeed he had been wronged, they dwindled to nothing at