Suspicions which had been in his mind all the time had developed.  He had had proof in divers ways.  He said to himself, “That man is a scoundrel, a common swindler, if I know one when I see him.”  But suspicions as to the girl had never for one minute dwelt in his furthest fancy.  He had thought speculatively of the possible complicity of the other women of the household, but never of hers.  They were all very constant in their church attendance; indeed, Carroll had given quite a sum towards the Sunday-school library, and he had even heard suggestions as to the advisability of making him superintendent and displacing the present incumbent, who was superannuated.  Sometimes in church Anderson had glanced keenly from under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law.  It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not, how entirely innocent!  And then the expressions of their pretty, childish faces disarmed him as they sat there, their dark, graceful heads drooping before the divine teaching with gentle acquiescence like a row of flowers.  But there was something about the fearless lift to Charlotte’s head and the clear regard of her dark eyes which separated her from the others.  She bloomed by herself, individual, marked by her own characteristics.  He thought of her passionate assertion of the principles of her home training with pity and worshipful admiration.  It was innocence incarnate pleading for guilt which she believed like herself, because of the blinding power of her own light.  “She thinks them all like herself,” he said to himself.  “She reasons from her knowledge of herself.”  Then reflecting how Carroll had undoubtedly sent his son to return his pilfered sweets, he began to wonder if he could possibly have been mistaken in his estimate of the man’s character, if he had reasoned from wrong premises, and from that circumstantial evidence which his experience as a lawyer should have led him to distrust.

Suddenly a shadow flung out across the office floor and a man stood in the doorway.  He was tall and elderly, with a shag of gray beard and a shining dome of forehead over a nervous, blue-eyed face.  He was the druggist, Andrew Drew, who had his little pharmacy on the opposite side of the street, a little below Anderson’s grocery.  He united with his drug business a local and long-distance telephone and the Western Union telegraph-office, and he rented and sold commutation-books of railroad tickets to the City.

“Good-day,” he said.  Then, before Anderson could respond, he plunged at once into the subject on his mind, a subject that was wrinkling his forehead.  However, he first closed the office door and glanced around furtively.  “See here,” he whispered, mysteriously; “you know those new folks, the Carrolls?” With a motion of his lank shoulder he indicated the direction of the Carroll house.