e listening passively. Henry thought he looked pale and anxious.
When he saw Henry he smiled. "I have an errand, a business errand,"
explained Henry. "Please tell Mrs. Whitman I shall be home in time
for supper. I don't think she knew when I went out. She was in the
kitchen."

"All right," replied Horace.

After he had passed them Henry caught the words, "I think you owe me
an explanation," in Rose's voice.

"It is about this blamed candy," thought Henry, feeling the crumpled
mass in his pocket. He had a distrust of candy, and it occurred to
him that he would have an awkward explanation to make if the candy
should by any possibility melt and stick to the pocket of his Sunday
coat. He therefore took out the broken box and carried it in his
hand, keeping the paper wrapper firmly around it. "What in creation
is it all about?" he thought, irritably. He felt a sense of personal
injury. Henry enjoyed calm, and it seemed to him that he was being
decidedly disturbed, as by mysterious noises breaking in upon the
even tenor of his life.

"Sylvia is keeping something to herself that is worrying her to
death, in spite of her being so tickled to have the girl with us, and
now here is this candy," he said to himself. He understood that for
some reason Horace had not wanted Rose to eat the candy, that he had
resorted to fairly desperate measures to prevent it, but he could not
imagine why. He had no imagination for sensation or melodrama, and
the candy affair was touching that line. He had been calmly prosaic
with regard to Miss Farrel's death. "They can talk all they want to
about murder and suicide," he had said to Sylvia. "I don't believe a
word of it."

"But the doctors found--" began Sylvia.

"Found nothing," interposed Henry. "What do doctors know? She et
something that hurt her. How do doctors know but what anybody might
eat something that folks think is wholesome, that, if the person
ain't jest right for it, acts like poison? Doctors don't know much.
She et something that hurt her."

"Poor Lucinda's cooking is enough to hurt 'most anybody," admitted
Sylvia; "but they say they found--"

"Don't talk such stuff," said Henry, fiercely. "She et something. I
don't know what you women like best to suck at, candy or horrors."

Now Henry was forced to admit that he himself was confronted by
something mysterious. Why had Horace fairly flung that candy on the
ground, and trampled on it, unless he had suddenly gone mad, or--?