Dan, for the only time that day, became profane as he denounced the sneak, whoever it might be, who had started such a suggestion. He expressed the conviction that the fortune-woman had her foot in it some way. Superstitious fools, he said, were likely to be suspicious.
   But Dan's anathemas did not stay the rising tide. As the searchers came back, suspicious glances were turned upon the father, who sat with his afflicted family at the house. Some of the searchers stealthily examined under the barn, believing that Willie had been "knocked on the head" with a flail, and concealed under the floor.
   But John the father was no coward, and he had neighbors and friends who believed in him. They told him of the suspicions arising against him. On the instant he called a meeting at the little hovel of a schoolhouse, a few rods down the road. The hundred searchers gathered there, and filled the room, sitting, lolling, and lying upon the benches. The father of the lost child, almost a stranger to most of the searchers, took his place at the teacher's desk, and confronted his accusers.
   It was plain, direct work. Here were a hundred men who had exhausted all known means of finding the lost boy; and more than fifty of them had said in effect to the man before them, "We think you killed him." All were looking at John: he rose up, and, facing the crowd with a dauntless eye, he made a speech.
   If this were a story told by Homer or Herodotus, I suppose John's speech would figure as a wonderful piece of eloquence; for a man never had a grander opportunity to try his strength in persuading others than John had. But in fact there was nothing grand about the matter, except that here was a straightforward man with nerves of steel, who had been "hard hit," as Dan said, by the loss of his boy, and was now repelling with courage, and almost scorn, a thrust that might have killed a weaker man.
   His speech was grammatically correct, cool, deliberate, and dignified. He said he had no knowledge of the black-hearted man who had originated so cruel a suspicion at such a time, and he did not wish to know who he was. He asked his hearers to consider how entirely without support in the known facts of the case the accusations were that had been suggested against him. It was a purely gratuitous assumption, with not a particle of evidence of any kind to establish it. He had understood that he was supposed to have killed his child in a tiger, and then concealed the body. Such a thing could not have happened with him as killing his own child or any other child in that way; and, if it had so happened, he would not have concealed it. He only wished to brand this creation of some vile man, there present probably, as a lie. That was all he had to say upon that point.
   In continuing his speech, when he alluded to what he had suffered in losing the boy he loved the best of any thing on earth, there was a twitching of the muscles of his face, which, however he instantly controlled as unworthy of him. He closed his speech by appealing to his friends, who had known him long and well, to come forward at this time, and testify to his integrity.
   As he ceased, the men rose up from the benches, and conversed together freely of the probabilities about John. A group of three or four gathered around him, and, placing their hands upon his shoulders, told the crowd that they had known John for twenty years, and that he was incapable of murder, or perfidy, or deceit, and as honest a man as could be found in the county.

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