"A good name for it, too," commented Gladys. "Nobody would ever think to find a pocket there."
Lillian had suddenly ceased to speak. She had suited the action to the word and slipped her own fingers into the pocket. There was something within. She drew it forth, startled, her pale face all contorted and ghastly. It was a bit of stone, of white stone, fashioned by curious nature in the similitude of a lily, wrought in the darkness, the silence of the depths of the earth. Lillian had previously seen such things; she recognized the efflorescence of a limestone cavern. She sprang up suddenly with a scream that rang through the room with the force and volume of a clarion tone.
"This child has been in a cave!" she shrilled, remembering the raid on the moonshiners' cavern. "He is not dead. He is stolen, _stolen_!"
The logic of the possibilities, cemented by her renewal of frantic hope, had constructed a stanch theory. She was reasoning on its every phase. The coercion of this significant discovery had suggested the truth. "This coat was left as a blind, a bluff, to cover the tracks of a crime. Gladys, Gladys, think--_think_!"
But poor Gladys, in her deep mourning gown, all her splendid beauty beclouded by grief, sadly shook her head, unconvinced. The child had possibly found the stone, she argued.
"Would he not have shared his joy with every creature in the household?" demanded Lillian. "Did he ever have a thought that I did not know?"
"It might have been given to him," Gladys sadly persisted.
"Remember his disposition, Gladys, his grateful little heart. He would have worn us all out, showing the gift and celebrating the generosity of the giver. How flattered he was, always, to be considered! He never seemed in the least to care for the value of the thing. He would cherish an empty spool from a friend's hand. It was wonderful how he loved to be loved. I feel sure, I _know_, that coat was taken from him; and he is alive, _stolen_."
And from this conviction she would not depart. It was a folly, a frenzy, her two friends contended. Its indulgence would threaten her sanity. They besought her to consider anew. The discovery of such a stone in this mountain region was altogether devoid of significance. Right reason and religion alike dictated submission to the decrees of Providence.