"No," agreed David; "I do not believe he meant to take it." "What _did_ he mean?" "I do not know." "Doesn't anybody know?" "Nobody knows," interposed the squire. "Now, Bevy, get the pie." Immediately Bevy started for her kitchen. When after a few minutes she had not reappeared, the squire followed her. The kitchen was empty, no Bevy was to be seen; but from across the yard a loud chattering issued from Edwin's Sally's kitchen. In the evening the squire and the preacher came and sat with David on his porch. The communion set had been taken from its hiding-place and the preacher's wife had polished it until it was once more bright and beautiful. Millerstown dropped in by twos and threes to behold it, each with his own eyes. The squire and the preacher and David talked about many things of interest to Millerstown and to the world at large. When the two men went away together, they said that David had astonished them. Later in the evening another man entered the gate and came up to the porch. Oliver Kuhns, the elder, sat down in the chair which the squire had left. "I heard a strange thing to-day," said he, brokenly. "I cannot understand it. When I was in great trouble, your father helped me. If you want I shall tell Millerstown, I will. I took my money when my father died and went to New York and bad people got me, and when I came home to my wife and little children, I had nothing. Your father lent it to me so she should not find it out, and he would never take it again." "He would not want you to tell Millerstown," said David. As Oliver Kuhns, the elder, went out the gate, Jacob Fackenthal came in. He would not sit down. "Your pop saved me from jail, David," said he. "Anything I can do for you, I will. Nobody in Millerstown believes that he meant to take the communion set. If you will stay in Millerstown, Millerstown will show you what it thinks." After a long time David went into the great house, through the front door, up the broad stairway to the handsome room which he had selected for his own. He could not understand his mother and father; still, in a measure, they put him away from them. Dimly he comprehended their tragedy, error on one side, refusal to forgive on the other, and heartbreak for both. He thought long of his father and mother. But when he went to sleep, he was thinking of William Koehler and his son Alvin and planning the fitting-out of a little store and the planting of a garden and the purchasing of a flock of chickens and several hives of bees. Old ghosts were laid, old unhappinesses forgotten; from David's consciousness there had vanished even Katy Gaumer, who in a strange way had brought him a blessing. CHAPTER XXII KATY IS TO BE EDUCATED AT LAST