Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old quarters,
never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood
noticed it, the story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed
some offence against his father, was enough to prevent surprise. To
connect the fact of Dunsey's disappearance with that of the robbery
occurring on the same day, lay quite away from the track of every
one's thought--even Godfrey's, who had better reason than any one
else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no
mention of the weaver between them since the time, twelve years ago,
when it was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his
imagination constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him
continually in some congenial haunt, to which he had walked off on
leaving Wildfire--saw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and
meditating a return home to the old amusement of tormenting his
elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two
facts together, I doubt whether a combination so injurious to the
prescriptive respectability of a family with a mural monument and
venerable tankards, would not have been suppressed as of unsound
tendency. But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance of
spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality into the channel
of nightmare, are great preservatives against a dangerous
spontaneity of waking thought.

When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good
company, the balance continued to waver between the rational
explanation founded on the tinder-box, and the theory of an
impenetrable mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of
the tinder-box-and-pedlar view considered the other side a
muddle-headed and credulous set, who, because they themselves were
wall-eyed, supposed everybody else to have the same blank outlook;