For a few days Farley Curtis lived at the Coldriver House, then moved to Grandmother Penny’s, where Sarah Pound boarded.  Secretly Bob Allen was furious, without apparent cause.  He had no reason to draw conclusions, for boarding houses were scarce in Coldriver.  What Sarah thought of the event was not so easily discovered.

Bob would naturally have discussed immediately the significance of Farley Curtis’s arrival in Coldriver, with Scattergood, for everybody in Coldriver went to Scattergood with whatever important occurrence that befell, but Scattergood was absent on a political mission.  When he returned Bob lost no time in laying the matter before him.

“Um!...  Calculated he’d turn up.  Natural....  Acted kind of anxious, eh?  What was it he said about a will—­or somethin’?”

Bob repeated Curtis’s conversation minutely.

“Um!...  That young man didn’t suspect—­he knew,” said Scattergood, reaching automatically for his shoes.  “What he wanted to know was—­has it been found?...  Um!...  Not a will.  Somethin’.  Somethin’ he’s afraid of bein’ found....  Hain’t the kind of feller I’d like to see spendin’ old Solon’s money....  Guess you and me’ll go through them papers ag’in.”

So with minute care Bob and Scattergood examined the documents and memoranda and receipts and accounts of Solon Beatty, but no will, no minute reference to Farley Curtis, was discovered.  They went again to Solon’s house to question Mary and to rummage there with the hope of falling upon some such hiding place as the queer old man might have chosen as the safe depository of his will.  Mary Beatty was not helpful; middle-aged, with wasted youth behind her; she was even resentful that her meticulous housekeeping should be disturbed.

Scattergood and Bob sat down in the parlor, discouraged.  It was evident there was no will.  Solon had neglected to attend to that matter until it was too late....  Scattergood wiggled his feet uneasily and stared at the motto over the door.

“Solon didn’t run much to religion,” he observed.

“No,” said Mary Beatty.

“Um!...  Have a Bible, maybe?  One of them big ones?”

“Up in his room, Mr. Baines.  It always laid on the table there—­unopened.”

“Opened it yourself lately, Mary?  Been readin’ the Scriptures out of that p’tic’lar book?”

“No.”

“Um!...  Got a kind of a hankerin’ to read a verse or two,” said Scattergood.  “Come on, Bob.  You ‘n’ me’ll peruse Solon’s Bible some.”

The huge Bible with its Dore illustrations lay on the marble-topped table in old Solon’s bedroom.  Scattergood opened it—­found it stiff with lack of use, its pages clinging together as if their gilt edging had never been broken....  Bob leaned over Scattergood while the old man rapidly thumbed the pages....  He brought to light a pressed flower, and shrugged his shoulders.  What moment of softness in the life of a hard old man did this flower commemorate?...  A letter whose ink was faded to illegibility!  Even Solon Beatty had once known the rose-leaf scent of romance.