“I am as sure as a man can be that Peter Lamb set fire to the parsonage.  He has always been revengeful and he owed our friend, the Rector, a grudge.  I have no direct evidence of his guilt, and what am I to do?  You know why I have always stood by him.  I suppose that I was wrong.”

She knew only too well, but now his evident trouble troubled her and she loved him too well to accept the temptation to use the exasperating phrase, “I always told you so.”  “You can do nothing, James, without more certainty.  You will not question his mother?”

“No, I can’t do that, Ann; and yet I cannot quite let this go by and simply sit still.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“I do not know,” and with this he left her and rode to the mills.  In the afternoon he called at Mrs. Lamb’s and asked where he could find Peter.

She was evidently uneasy, as she said, “You gave him work on the new roof of the Baptist chapel with Boynton; he might be there.”

He made no comment, and went on his way until reaching the chapel he called Peter down from the roof and said, “Come with me, I want to talk to you.”

Peter was now sober and was sharply on guard.  “Come away from the town,” added the Squire.  He crossed the street, entered his own woods and walked through them until he came in sight of the smoking relics of the parsonage, where at a distance some few persons were idly discussing what was also on Penhallow’s mind.  Here he turned on his foster-brother, and said, “You set that house on fire.  I could get out of your mother enough to make it right to arrest you, but I will not bring her into the matter.  Others suspect you.  Now, what have you to say?”

“Say!  I didn’t do it—­that’s all.  I was in bed.”

“Why did you not get up and help?”

“Wasn’t any of my business,” he replied sulkily.  “Everybody in this town’s against me, and now when I’ve given up drinking, to say I set a house afire—­”

“Well!” said Penhallow, “this is my last word, you may go.  I shall not have you arrested, but I cannot answer for what others may do.”

Peter walked away.  He had been for several days enough under the influence of whisky to intensify what were for him normal or at least habitually indulged characteristics.  For them he was only in part responsible.  His mother had spoiled him.  He had been as a child the playmate of his breast-brother until time and change had left him only in such a relation to Penhallow as would have meant little or nothing to most men.  As a result, out of the Squire’s long and indulgent care of a lad who grew up a very competent carpenter, and gradually more and more an idle drunkard, Peter had come to overestimate the power of his claim on Penhallow.  What share in his evil qualities his father’s drunkenness had, is in no man’s power to say.  His desire to revenge the slightest ill-treatment or the abuse his evil ways earned had the impelling force of a