Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/25

Rh She sprang to her feet with a cry; she stood as though petrified, with one hand to her head, the other holding the bag. Her eyes, wide open with dismay, were fixed on the little heap she had emptied on the table—a heap of shot, great and small, some pennypieces, and a few bullets.

"What is the matter with you, Mehalah? What has happened?"

The girl was speechless. The old woman moved to the table and looked.

"What is this, Mehalah?"

"Look here! Lead, not gold."

"There has been a mistake," said the widow, nervously; "call Abraham; he has given you the wrong sack."

"There has been no mistake. This is the right bag. He had no other. We have been robbed."

The old woman was about to put her hand on the heap, but Mehalah arrested it.

"Do not touch anything here," she said; "let all remain as it is till I bring Abraham. I must ascertain who has robbed us."

She leaned her elbows on the table; she plaited her fingers over her brow, and sat thinking. What could have become of the money? Where could it have been withdrawn? Who could have been the thief?

Abraham Dowsing, the shepherd, was a simple, surly old man, honest but not intelligent, selfish but trustworthy. He was a fair specimen of the East Saxon peasant, a man of small reasoning power, moving like a machine, very slow, muddy in mind, only slightly advanced in the scale of beings above the dumb beasts; with instinct just awaking into intelligence, but not sufficiently awake to know its powers; more unhappy and helpless than the brute, for instinct is exhausted in the transformation process; not happy as a man, for he is encumbered with the new gift, not illumined and assisted by it. He is distrustful of its power, inapt to appreciate it, detesting the exercise of it.

On the fidelity of Abraham Dowsing, Mehalah felt assured she might rely. He was guiltless of the abstraction. She relied on him to sell the sheep to the best advantage,