"Katy saw him!" Here was Katy again, Katy who had seemed to them all to be such a promising child, Katy who was determined to go away to school, Katy who helped young rascals from her poverty, Katy who now would not study, who refused to do anything but sit dismally about! "Katy Gaumer," he repeated. "Our Katy?" "Yes, Katy Gaumer," said David. "She says she was a little child and that she ran away from her grandmother to the church and saw my father put the silver cup into a hole made by plastering up the window." "Impossible!" cried the squire. "Nonsense! Humbug! The girl is crazy. It couldn't be!" David looked at him and drew a deep breath. "That was what I said. Then I thought of Koehler, and of how he had gone mad, and I knew my father would wish it investigated." An electric shock tingled the squire's sensorium. He remembered the contorted face, the trembling hands, the terrible earnestness with which Koehler made his attack upon the dead man. "What is your plan, David?" he asked. "I thought we might get the key of the church and go out there and look about. It's bright moonlight and I believe we can see without making a light. I don't believe I can sleep until I have been out there and have looked about. I suppose we will have to get a key from the preacher." "I have a key," said the squire. "But let us wait till to-morrow, David." "I must go to-night," insisted David. Only once were words exchanged on the journey. The two men went out the village street, past Grandfather Gaumer's, where a hundred sweet odors saluted them from the garden and where Katy lay weeping on her bed, to the path along the pike, between the open fields. "You knew my father," said David. "Such a thing could not have been possible." "I knew him from a boy," answered the squire heartily and honestly. "Such a thing could not have been possible." "Had Koehler ever made this accusation before the time of my father's funeral?" "He made it to the preacher after the service disappeared, but the preacher told him he must be still." "Could Koehler have had any motive for taking it himself?" "He was a poor man," answered the squire. "But he was simple and honest--all the Koehlers were." "What do you suppose became of it?" "I have always supposed that some one sneaked in while Koehler was away for a minute. A tramp could easily have walked in." "Did my father never say that he had been in the church that afternoon?" "Not that I know of." The church door opened easily and quietly, the church was dim and silent. The tall, narrow windows, fitted with clear glass, let in the light of the moon upon the high pulpit, the oaken pews, the bare floor. The pulpit and the Bible were draped with protecting covers of white which made the church seem more ghostly and mysterious. Katy Gaumer in certain moods would have been enchanted. Together the two men looked at the smooth wall beside the pulpit.