at was easy. Darling
Rookie! he should if he wanted to.

XLVI

The story ends, as it began, with a letter. It was written by Raven, in
Boston, to Dick, in France, about a year after Tenney gave himself up.
The first half of it had to do with accounts, money paid over by Raven
to Dick, requisitions sent in by Dick to Raven, concise statements of
what Raven judged it best to do in certain contingencies Dick had asked
instructions upon. Then it continued on a new page, an intimate letter
from Raven to the nephew who was administering the Anne Hamilton Fund.
The previous pages would be submitted to the two Frenchmen, who, with
Dick, formed the acting board. These last pages were for Dick alone.

"No, Tenney wasn't even indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you
can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to
house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to
spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down
as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be
accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief
argument there was that he always behaved as if the things he believed
were actually so. He believed in hell and told you you were bound for
it. But I can't go into that. They couldn't, the ones that tried to.
They got all balled up, just as their intellectual betters do when they
tackle theology. All this, of course, began before you went away, and it
continued in mounting volume. If you want New England psychology, you
have it there, to the last word. That curious mixture of condemnation
and acceptance! They believed him capable of doing things unspeakable,
and yet there wasn't a public voice to demand an inquiry as to whether
he really had done them. They cheerfully accepted the worst and believed
the best. And it's true he had behaved more or less queer for a long
time, wouldn't speak to people when he met them, didn't seem to know
them, and then suddenly breaking out, in the blacksmith's shop or buying
his grain at the store, and asking if they were saved. The women were
the queerest. They said he set his life by the child. Why, he couldn't
even bear to go to the funeral of his wife or the child either, and
hadn't they seen him and Tira drivin' by, time and again, the baby in
Tira's lap, in his little white coat and hood? I don't know how many
times I heard the evidence of that little white hood. Even C