Of course, there was an investigation into the lamentable affair by the apostolic body of the Peculiar Children of God. The caretaker was invited to explain the presence of all these tintacks on the apostolic chairs. It was idle for the caretaker to deny all knowledge of tintacks, because in the chapel accounts there was an item against her, proving that she had only this week purchased for use in Bethesda a large packet of tintacks. This purchase of tintacks she made no attempt to deny, but she maintained, without her evidence being in the least shaken, that when she last saw the tintacks the bulk of them remained in the cardboard box from which she had taken only two or three to nail down the strips of carpet on the benches where they had come loose. It seemed equally idle for the apostles to accuse such a ramshackle old woman of having deliberately arranged the tintacks as weapons of offence, nor could it seriously be argued that mere carelessness was responsible for leaving them about point upward in groups of four. Some of the older apostles were inclined to blame the Devil for the assault; but the younger members of the apostolic body, reacting to the spirit of intellectual progress that was abroad, could not accept the theory of so literally diabolic a practical joke. Mr. Fricker, the junior apostle, put forward an opinion that the outrage had been committed by members of the Salvation Army, a body which was making considerable and most unwelcome progress in Brigham. The result of the investigation, however, was to leave the horrid business wrapt in mystery, in which costume it would doubtless have remained for ever if that afternoon young Caleb Fuller had not said to his father with a smile of radiant innocence: “Papa, how funny it should have been tintacks on your chair.” “What do you mean by ‘funny,’ my boy?” demanded Joshua angrily. “What are you grinning at?” “I didn’t mean to grin, papa,” said Caleb, turning out his smile as swiftly as if it were a flaring gas-jet. “What I meant was ‘funny’ was that last night Bram had a tintack in his pocket, because he ran it into my leg.” “Bram had a tintack?” repeated the father. “Yes, and he was out late last night, and Mrs. Pead was saying outside Bethesda that she’d noticed one of the windows in the chapel was left open all last night.” Joshua Fuller’s pasty face pulsed and sweated like a boiling beefsteak pudding. “Where’s Bram now?” “He’s upstairs in grandmamma’s room, and they were laughing, papa. I thought it funny they should be laughing like that on a Sunday afternoon.” “You thought it funny, did you?” Joshua growled. “If you don’t look out for yourself, my boy, I’ll thrash you soundly when I’ve finished with your brother.” “What have _I_ done, papa?” Caleb began to blubber. “I thought you wanted to find out who put the tintacks on the apostles’ chairs.”