Bethel, who appeared to have sufficient mental employment of some sort, passed our group with a smile and the remark:
"I can't ask you in, gentlemen, until I have set my house in order. Those vandals have made it a place of confusion."
He entered the house through a rear door, which had been thrown open by the invaders, and a moment later, as I passed by a side window, I glanced in and saw him, not engaged in "setting his house in order," but sitting in a low, broad-backed chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loosely clasped, his head bent forward, his eyes "fixed on vacancy," the whole attitude that of profound meditation.
The finding of the tools, the manner of Bethel, both puzzled me. I went over to Jim Long, who had seated himself on the well platform, and asked:
"Umph!" responded Jim, somewhat gruffly. "'Twon't be long a comin' to a focus."
And he spoke truly. In a few moments we heard a shout from the rear of the garden. Tom Briggs and his party had found a spot where the soil had been newly turned. In another moment a dozen hands were digging fiercely.
Just then, and unnoticed by the exploring ones, a new element of excitement came upon the scene.
Mr. Beale, the father of the missing child, accompanied by two or three friends, came in from the street. They paused a moment, in seeming irresolution, then the father, seeing the work going on in the garden, uttered a sharp exclamation, and started hastily toward the spot, where, at that moment, half a dozen men were bending over the small excavation they had made, and twice as many more were crowding close about them.
"They have found something," said Harris, the elder, and he hastily followed Mr. Beale, leaving his son and myself standing together near the rear door of the house, and Jim still sitting aloof, the only ones now, save Dr. Bethel, who were not grouping closer and closer about the diggers, in eager anxiety to see what had been unearthed.
In another moment, there came a tumult of exclamations, imprecations, oaths; and above all the rest, a cry of mingled anguish and rage from the lips of the bereaved and tortured father.
The crowd about the spot fell back, and the diggers arose, one of them holding something up to the view of the rest. Instinctively, young Harris and myself started toward them.