Crawford was Edwin Smith.  And save that Edgar S. Farmer was a young man and Edwin Smith a man in the middle sixties, they were almost identical in appearance.  Each time she had seen Mr. Smith’s photograph she had felt certain she must have met the original.  Here was the reason—­this man in the other photograph.  The only difference was the difference of age.  Edwin Smith had a nose like Edgar Farmer’s, and a chin like his and eyes like his.  And Isaiah had just said that Edgar Farmer had a crooked finger on his right hand caused by an accident with a hogshead of salt.  Mary remembered well something Crawford had told her, that his father had a finger on the right hand which had been hurt in a mine years before he, Crawford, was born.

It could not be, of course—­it could not be—­and yet—­Oh, what did it mean?

CHAPTER XXIV

In his own room at the end of the second-story hall, over the kitchen, Mr. Chase was sitting reading the local paper before retiring.  It was a habit he had, one of which Captain Shadrach pretended to approve highly.  “Best thing in the world, Isaiah,” declared the Captain.  “Sleep’s what everybody needs and I can’t think of any surer way of gettin’ to sleep than readin’ the South Harniss news in that paper.”

Whether or not this unkind joke was deserved is not material; at all events Isaiah was reading the paper when he was very much startled by a knock at the door.

“Who—­who is it?” he stammered.

“It is Mary,” whispered a voice outside the door.  “I want to speak with you, Isaiah.  You’re not in bed, are you?”

Isaiah reluctantly relinquished the paper.  “No, no,” he replied, “I ain’t in bed.  What’s the matter?  Zoeth ain’t no worse, is he?”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

“Come on in.  You don’t need no lettin’.”

Mary entered.  She was very grave and very earnest.

“What in the nation,” began Isaiah, “are you prowlin’ around this hour of the night for?”

“Hush!  Isaiah, you must tell me everything now.  There’s no use to say you won’t—­you must. Who was Edgar Farmer and what wrong did he do my uncles?”

Isaiah said nothing; he did not attempt to answer.  Instead he gaped at her with such an expression of guilty surprise, fright, and apprehension that at any other time she would have laughed.  Just now, however, she was far from laughing.

“Come! come!” she said, impatiently.  “I mean it.  I want you to tell me all about this Edgar Farmer.”

“Now—­now, Mary-’Gusta, I told you—­”

“You told me a very little.  Now I want to know the rest.  Everyone else in this family knows it and it is time I did.  I’m not a child any more.  Tell me the whole story, Isaiah.”

“I shan’t neither.  Oh, by godfreys, this is what I get by sayin’ more’n I ought to!  And yet how could I help it when I see that tintype?  It’s just my luck!  Nobody else but me would have had the dratted luck to have that picture stuck into their face and eyes unexpected.  And ’twas just so when you found that other one years ago up attic.  I had to be the one you sprung it on!  I had to be!  But I shan’t tell you nothin’!”