And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost
article or other, in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk in which he had no
license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and black-haired
lad, brave in white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb
remembered having been told that he had died for another with that same
smile which the picture had preserved--the tall and jaunty youngster.
And so their comprehension was mutual. They understood, did Caleb and
his sister.
But sure as he was of Sarah's fundamental kindness, Caleb experienced a
twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed the
iron gate behind the grotesque little figure which had already started
across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun was low
in the west; he had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the
Hunter establishment to sup early during the warm summer months. But
when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from
the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward
his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of
too pronounced mellowness--stray human or feline or lost yellow dog.
Sarah's gaze, however, was not for her brother at that moment. Her
eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill
trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots.
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