When he reached the hotel he turned into the bar-room, and observing that it happened to be comparatively deserted, asked for a glass of whiskey. In response to the barkeeper's glance of curiosity-as Uncle Ben seldom drank, and then only as a social function with others-he explained:-
"I reckon straight whiskey is about ez good ez the next thing for blind chills."
The bar-keeper here interposed that in his larger medical experience he had found the exhibition of ginger in combination with gin attended with effect, although it was evident that in his business capacity he regarded Uncle Ben, as a drinker, with distrust.
"Ye ain't seen Mr. Ford hanging round yer lately?" continued Uncle Ben with laborious ease.
The bar-keeper, with his eye still scornfully fixed on his customer, but his hands which were engaged in washing his glasses under the counter giving him the air of humorously communicating with a hidden confederate, had not seen the school-master that afternoon.
Uncle Ben turned away and slowly mounted the staircase to the master's room. After a moment's pause on the landing, which must have been painfully obvious to any one who heard his heavy ascent, he gave two timid raps on the door which were equally ridiculous in contrast with his powerful tread. The door was opened promptly by the master.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said shortly. "Come in."
Uncle Ben entered without noticing the somewhat ungracious form of invitation. "It war me," he said, "dropped in, not finding ye downstairs. Let's have a drink."
The master gazed at Uncle Ben, who, owing to his abstraction, had not yet wiped his mouth of the liquor he had imperfectly swallowed, and was in consequence more redolent of whiskey than a confirmed toper. He rang the bell for the desired refreshment with a slightly cynical smile. He was satisfied that his visitor, like many others of humble position, was succumbing to his good fortune.
"I wanted to see ye, Mr. Ford," he began, taking an unproffered chair and depositing his hat after some hesitation outside the door, "in regard to what I onct told ye about my wife in Mizzouri. P'r'aps you disremember?"
"I remember," returned the master resignedly.
"You know it was that arternoon that fool Stacey sent the sheriff and the Harrisons over to McKinstry's barn."
"Go on!" petulantly said the master, who had his own reasons for not caring to recall it.
"It was that arternoon, you know, that you hadn't time to hark to me-hevin' to go off on an engagement," continued Uncle Ben with protracted deliberation, "and"-
"Yes, yes, I remember," interrupted the master exasperatedly, "and really unless you get on faster, I'll have to leave you again."
"It was that arternoon," said Uncle Ben without heeding him, "when I told you I hadn't any idea what had become o' my wife ez I left in Mizzouri."
"Yes," said the master sharply, "and I told you it was your bounden duty to look for her."
"That's so," said Uncle Ben nodding comfortably, "them's your very words; on'y a leetle more strong than that, ef I don't disremember. Well, I reckon I've got an idee!" The master assumed a sudden expression of interest, but Uncle Ben did not vary his monotonous tone.
"I kem across that idee, so to speak, on the trail. I kem across it in some letters ez was lying wide open in the brush. I picked em up and I've got 'em here."
He slowly took the letters from his pocket with one hand, while he dragged the chair on which he was sitting beside the master. But with a quick flush of indignation Mr. Ford rose and extended his hand.
"These are MY letters, Dabney," he said sternly, "stolen from my desk. Who has dared to do this?"
But Uncle Ben had, as if accidentally, interposed his elbow between the master and Seth's spoils.
"Then it's all right?" he returned deliberately. "I brought 'em here because I thought they might give an idee where my wife was. For them letters is in her own handwrite. You remember ez I told ez how she was a scollard."
The master sat back in his chair white and dumb. Incredible, extraordinary, and utterly unlooked for as was this revelation, he felt instinctively that it was true.
"I couldn't read it myself-ez you know. I didn't keer to ax any one else to read it for me-you kin reckon why, too. And that's why I'm troublin' you to-night, Mr. Ford-ez a friend."
The master with a desperate effort recovered his voice. "It is impossible. The lady who wrote those letters does not bear your name. More than that," he added with hasty irrelevance, "she is so free that she is about to be married, as you might have read. You have made a mistake, the handwriting may be like, but it cannot be really your wife's."
Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. "It's her'n-there's no mistake. When a man, Mr. Ford, hez studied that handwrite-havin', so to speak, knowed it on'y from the OUTSIDE-from seein' it passin' like between friends-that man's chances o' bein' mistook ain't ez great ez the man's who on'y takes in the sense of the words that might b'long to everybody. And her name not bein' the same ez mine, don't foller. Ef she got a divorce she'd take her old gal's name— the name of her fammerly. And that would seem to allow she DID get a divorce. What mowt she hev called herself when she writ this?"
The master saw his opportunity and rose to it with a chivalrous indignation, that for the moment imposed even upon himself. "I decline to answer that question," he said angrily. "I refuse to allow the name of any woman who honors me with her confidence to be dragged into the infamous outrage that has been committed upon me and common decency. And I shall hold the thief and scoundrel— whoever he may be-answerable to myself in the absence of her natural protector."
Uncle Ben surveyed the hero of these glittering generalities with undisguised admiration. He extended his hand to him gravely.
"Shake! Ef another proof was wantin', Mr. Ford, of that bein' my wife's letter," he said, "that high-toned style of yours would settle it. For, ef thar was one thing she DID like, it was that sort of po'try. And one reason why her and me didn't get on, and why I skedaddled, was because it wasn't in my line. Et's all in trainin'! On'y a man ez had the Fourth Reader at his fingers' ends could talk like that. Bein' brought up on Dobell-ez is nowhere— it sorter lets me outer you, ez it did outer HER. But allowin' it ain't the square thing for YOU to mention her name, that wouldn't be nothin' agin' MY doin' it, and callin' her, well-Lou Price in a keerless sort o' way, eh?"
"I decline to answer further," replied the master quickly, although his color had changed at the name. "I decline to say another word on the matter until this mystery is cleared up-until I know who dared to break into my desk and steal my property, and the purpose of this unheard-of outrage. And I demand possession of those letters at once."
Uncle Ben without a word put them in the master's hand, to his slight surprise, and it must be added to his faint discomfiture, nor was it decreased when Uncle Ben added, with grave naivete and a patronizing pressure of his hand on his shoulder, — "In course ez you're taken' it on to yourself, and ez Lou Price ain't got no further call on ME, they orter be yours. Ez to who got 'em outer the desk, I reckon you ain't got no suspicion of any one spyin' round ye-hev ye?"
In an instant the recollection of Seth Davis's face at the window and the corroboration of Rupert's warning flashed across Ford's mind. The hypothesis that Seth had imagined that they were Cressy's letters, and had thrown them down without reading them when he had found out his mistake, seemed natural. For if he had read them he would undoubtedly have kept them to show to Cressy. The complex emotions that had disturbed the master on the discovery of Uncle Ben's relationship to the writer of the letters were resolving themselves into a furious rage at Seth. But before he dared revenge himself he must be first assured that Seth was ignorant of their contents. He turned to Uncle Ben.