Margaret stood perplexed.  “I don’t know what to think of that!” she ejaculated.  “I was next to the last person who saw him before he was drowned.  It was late on a June afternoon, and he was dressed as you describe.  He was bareheaded because he had found a quail’s nest before the bird began to brood, and he gathered the eggs in his hat and left it in a fence corner to get on his way home; they found it afterward.”

“Was he coming from Carneys’?”

“He was on that side of the quagmire.  Why he ever skirted it so close as to get caught is a mystery you will have to dream out.  I never could understand it.”

“Was he doing something he didn’t want my mother to know?”

“Why?”

“Because if he had been, he might have cut close the swamp so he couldn’t be seen from the garden.  You know, the whole path straight to the pool where he sank can be seen from our back door.  It’s firm on our side.  The danger is on the north and east.  If he didn’t want mother to know, he might have tried to pass on either of those sides and gone too close.  Was he in a hurry?”

“Yes, he was,” said Margaret.  “He had been away longer than he expected, and he almost ran when he started home.”

“And he’d left his violin somewhere that you knew, and you went and got it.  I’ll wager he was going to play, and didn’t want mother to find it out!”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to you if you knew every little thing, so quit thinking about it, and just be glad you are to have what he loved best of anything.”

“That’s true.  Now I must hurry home.  I am dreadfully late.”

Elnora sprang up and ran down the road, but when she approached the cabin she climbed the fence, crossed the open woods pasture diagonally and entered at the back garden gate.  As she often came that way when she had been looking for cocoons her mother asked no questions.

Elnora lived by the minute until Saturday, when, contrary to his usual custom, Wesley went to town in the forenoon, taking her along to buy some groceries.  Wesley drove straight to the music store, and asked for the violin he had left to be mended.

In its new coat of varnish, with new keys and strings, it seemed much like any other violin to Sinton, but to Elnora it was the most beautiful instrument ever made, and a priceless treasure.  She held it in her arms, touched the strings softly and then she drew the bow across them in whispering measure.  She had no time to think what a remarkably good bow it was for sixteen years’ disuse.  The tan leather case might have impressed her as being in fine condition also, had she been in a state to question anything.  She did remember to ask for the bill and she was gravely presented with a slip calling for four strings, one key, and a coat of varnish, total, one dollar fifty.  It seemed to Elnora she never could put the precious instrument in the case and start home.  Wesley left her in the music store where the proprietor showed her all he could about tuning, and gave her several beginners’ sheets of notes and scales.  She carried the violin in her arms as far as the crossroads at the corner of their land, then reluctantly put it under the carriage seat.