Henry stared at Sylvia.  “It must have been an accident,” said he.

“It looked like an accident on purpose,” said Sylvia.  “Well, I guess I’ll go out and make some of that salad they like so much for supper.”

After Sylvia had gone Henry sat for a while reflecting, then he went noiselessly out of the front door and round to the grove.  He found the scattered pieces of candy and the broken box quickly enough.  He cast a wary glance around, and gathered the whole mass up and thrust it into the pocket of his Sunday coat.  Then he stole back to the house and got his hat and went out again.  He was hurrying along the road, when he met Horace and Rose returning.  Rose was talking, seemingly, with a cold earnestness to her companion.  Horace seemed to be listening passively.  Henry thought he looked pale and anxious.  When he saw Henry he smiled.  “I have an errand, a business errand,” explained Henry.  “Please tell Mrs. Whitman I shall be home in time for supper.  I don’t think she knew when I went out.  She was in the kitchen.”

“All right,” replied Horace.

After he had passed them Henry caught the words, “I think you owe me an explanation,” in Rose’s voice.

“It is about this blamed candy,” thought Henry, feeling the crumpled mass in his pocket.  He had a distrust of candy, and it occurred to him that he would have an awkward explanation to make if the candy should by any possibility melt and stick to the pocket of his Sunday coat.  He therefore took out the broken box and carried it in his hand, keeping the paper wrapper firmly around it.  “What in creation is it all about?” he thought, irritably.  He felt a sense of personal injury.  Henry enjoyed calm, and it seemed to him that he was being decidedly disturbed, as by mysterious noises breaking in upon the even tenor of his life.

“Sylvia is keeping something to herself that is worrying her to death, in spite of her being so tickled to have the girl with us, and now here is this candy,” he said to himself.  He understood that for some reason Horace had not wanted Rose to eat the candy, that he had resorted to fairly desperate measures to prevent it, but he could not imagine why.  He had no imagination for sensation or melodrama, and the candy affair was touching that line.  He had been calmly prosaic with regard to Miss Farrel’s death.  “They can talk all they want to about murder and suicide,” he had said to Sylvia.  “I don’t believe a word of it.”

“But the doctors found—­” began Sylvia.

“Found nothing,” interposed Henry.  “What do doctors know?  She et something that hurt her.  How do doctors know but what anybody might eat something that folks think is wholesome, that, if the person ain’t jest right for it, acts like poison?  Doctors don’t know much.  She et something that hurt her.”

“Poor Lucinda’s cooking is enough to hurt ’most anybody,” admitted Sylvia; “but they say they found—­”