Three days later a pall hung over Sabbath Valley. The coroner's inquest
had brought in a verdict of murder, and the day of the hearing had been
set. Mark Carter was to be tried for murder--was wanted for
murder as Elder Harricutt put it. It was out now and everybody knew it
but Mrs. Carter, who went serenely on her way getting her regular
letters from Mark postmarked New York and telling of little happenings
that were vague but pleasant and sounded so like Mark, so comforting
and son like. So strangely tender and comforting and more in detail
than Mark's letters had been wont to be. She thought to herself that he
was growing up at last.

He spoke of a time when he and she would have a
nice home together somewhere, some new place where he would get into
business and make a lot of money. Would she like that? And once he told
her he was afraid he hadn't been a very good son to her, but sometime
he would try to make it up to her, and she cried over that letter for
sheer joy. But all the rest of the town knew that Mark was suspected of
murder, and most of them thought he had run away and nobody could find
him. The county papers hinted that there were to be strange revelations
when the time of the trial came, but nothing definite seemed to come
out from day to day more than had been said at first, and there was a
strange lack of any mention of Mark in connection with it after the
first day.