It was not until he reached the schoolhouse that the evidences of
last night's outrage for a time distracted his mind from his singular
interview. He was struck with the workmanlike manner in which the locks
had been restored, and the care that had evidently been taken to remove
the more obvious and brutal traces of burglary. This somewhat staggered
his theory that Seth Davis was the perpetrator; mechanical skill and
thoughtfulness were not among the lout's characteristics. But he was
still more disconcerted on pushing back his chair to find a small
india-rubber tobacco pouch lying beneath it. The master instantly
recognized it: he had seen it a hundred times before--it was Uncle
Ben's. It was not there when he had closed the room yesterday afternoon.
Either Uncle Ben had been there last night, or had anticipated him this
morning. But in the latter case he would scarcely have overlooked his
fallen property--that, in the darkness of the night, might have readily
escaped detection. His brow darkened with a sudden conviction that
it was Uncle Ben who was the real and only offender, and that his
simplicity of the previous night was part of his deception.
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