FESTING COMMITS THEFT

The air was sharp and wonderfully invigorating when Festing stopped for a few moments, one evening, outside Charnock’s homestead.  A row of sandhills glimmered faintly against the blue haze in the east, but the western edge of the plain ran in a hard black line beneath a blaze of smoky red.  It was not dark, but the house was shadowy, and Festing noticed a smell of burning as he entered.

The top was off the stove in Charnock’s room, and the flame that licked about the hole showed that the floor was strewn with torn paper.  Charnock was busy picking up the pieces, and when he threw a handful into the stove a blaze streamed out and the light shone upon the wall.  Festing noted that the portrait that had hung there had gone, and looking round in search of it, saw a piece of the broken frame lying on the stove.  It was half burned and a thin streak of smoke rose from its glowing end.  Festing remarked this with a sense of anger.

“What are you doing, Bob?” he asked.

“Cleaning up,” Charnock answered, with a hoarse laugh, as he sat down among the litter.  “Proper thing when you mean to make a fresh start!  Suppose you take a drink and help.”

A whisky bottle and a glass stood on the table, and Festing thought Charnock had taken some liquor, although he was not drunk.  Stooping down, he began to pick up the papers, which, for the most part, looked like bills.  There were, however, a few letters in a woman’s hand, and by and by he found a bit of riband, a glove, and a locket that seemed to have been trampled on.

“Are these to be burned?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Charnock.  “Don’t want them about to remind me——­Burn the lot.”

Festing, with some reluctance, threw them into the stove.  He was not, as a rule, romantic, but it jarred him to see the things destroyed.  They had, no doubt, once been valued for the giver’s sake; dainty hands had touched them; the locket had rested on somebody’s white skin.  They were pledges of trust and affection, and he had found them, trampled by Charnock’s heavy boots, among the dust and rubbish.

“You’d get on faster if you used a brush,” he suggested.

“Can’t find the brush.  Confounded thing’s hidden itself somewhere.  Can’t remember where I put anything to-night.  Suppose you don’t see a small lace handkerchief about?”

Festing said he did not, and Charnock made a gesture of resignation.  “Looks as if I’d burned it with the other truck, but I got that from Sadie, and there’ll be trouble if she wants to know where it’s gone.  She may want to know some time.  Sadie doesn’t forget.”

“Did Sadie give you the locket?”

“She did not,” said Charnock.  “You’re a tactless brute.  But there’s something else I want, and I don’t know where it can have got.”

He upset a chair as he turned over some rubbish near the table, under which he presently crawled, while Festing looking about, noted a small white square laying half hidden by the stove.  Picking it up, he saw it was the portrait of the English girl, and resolved with a thrill of indignation that Charnock should not burn this.  He felt that its destruction would be something of an outrage.