Coming Through the Rye by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

split up for kindling wood long ago, or else her memory had made more of them than there were. And—oh yes—she could remember when Father went down to superintend the fixing of the wall where they said a part had fallen down. She hadn’t been down herself—but she was sure her father could not have known of those packing cases in the cellar filled with bottles. Now she remembered—the man who brought them worked a long time unpacking the boxes and bringing up those specimens, and her father had been busy in his office, arranging them as they were brought up. Very likely he hadn’t known a thing about what was going on. Whoever was employing him had just kept things camouflaged, and, of course, it was all the better screen for them to have her father unaware of what was going on down in his cellar. No one would have dared suspect a respectable man like her father! She would tell that detestable young man about it in the morning if he dared come near the house again—or, no, she preferred telling someone who would have more authority. She would go to the Judge’s secretary and explain it all out and ask them to see that the impertinent young man was told. Of course her father was all right!
    Having convinced herself bravely, she got up from the bed and washed the tears from her face. By and by, reconnoitering to see that all was quiet below, she stole down the hall to her father’s door again.
    Softly she turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped inside. The nurse sat silently by the window, looking out into the deep midnight sky. Long afterward Romayne remembered the impression of stars against the midnight blue of the sky as she stepped inside that room, and then went to look at the white twisted face on the pillow, her heart breaking with the agony of thinking how he lay there unable to speak for himself. But
she
would speak. She would clear his fair name! And she would go back now and spend the night in praying. Lawrence might have gone wrong, but Father,
never
! She would not believe it.
    She went back to her room after a little while. It was too terrible to stand there and watch that living death of her beloved.
    She changed into a little plain housedress that had been her work dress before the rise in their fortunes. Somehow she felt more honest and strong in that than going about in her pretty new things that might have been bought with doubtful money. Not that she was going to believe that they had yet, but she felt better and more like her old self in the old dress.
    In almost a businesslike way she knelt beside her bed when she was dressed and began to pray that God would help her to vindicate her father. But when she tried to frame the sentences, the words would not come, and it was just as if a preventing hand had been laid upon her soul forbidding her prayer. How strange! And then she set about it again, in a fury of anger that anyone should suspect her father—yes, and her brother—her dear brother! Surely there must be some mistake about him, too. That note—well—there would be some explanation. When day came, she would go again to the prison and find out from Lawrence and get the thing straight. Why had she not made Lawrence realize their father’s condition? Now she remembered she had been dazed herself.
    Again, for the third time, she tried to pray that everything would be set right in the morning.
    So through the night she struggled to pray, framing sentences that her inner consciousness told her did not fit the case, yet trying to reach the gate of heaven with a petition that was more a demand than a prayer that the Most High would work a miracle and undo all the sin that had been committed.
    When the first crimson streak of dawn sent a faint rosy light across the window, making half-visible the furniture in her room, Romayne suddenly rose from her knees with a set face and started downstairs. She realized that she was fighting to believe what her