Into Thin Air by Sandra Orchard & Guideposts

Author:Sandra Orchard & Guideposts [Orchard, Sandra & Guideposts]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guideposts
Published: 2024-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

For the first few minutes of the morning service, the rich music of the ancient pipe organ combined with the spirited voices of the choir and drowned out the theories chasing one another around Harriet’s head. A shaft of sunlight even found a fissure in the thunderheads and slanted through the stained glass window, intensifying the gorgeous colors in the scene of Jesus carrying the once-lost lamb on His shoulders.

Rather than having pews or chairs arranged in rows that faced a platform at the front of the church, White Church had a three-tiered platform where the pastor stood to deliver his sermon, with walled family boxes, complete with pews and little doors, and more rows of benches on the balcony above.

Harriet invited Polly to join her and Aunt Jinny along with Jinny’s son, Anthony, his wife, Olivia, and their six-year-old twins, Sebastian and Sophie, with Sophie delighting in holding Benji under Aunt Jinny’s watchful hovering.

When Will offered prayers for the needs of the flock, he asked that all who were lost might be found, and she wondered if he was thinking of Benji’s parents. After that, mulling over potential suspects and scenarios that could account for Rowena’s disappearance stole her concentration.

Then Will read the twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Job, and the opening verses diverted Harriet’s mind from its wandering. “‘There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore.’”

Harriet leaned closer to her cousin, an idea percolating in the back of her mind. “Are there any mines around here?”

Anthony blinked, clearly surprised by the question. “Uh, there used to be an alum mine, but that closed in the late 1800s.”

Harriet frowned, not familiar with alum mining—or specifically the kind of residual contamination it might leave behind that the Staveley cows could have picked up, possibly as runoff in a stream where they drank. But if the mine had closed so long ago, wouldn’t they have seen the effects on the cattle before now?

“There were lots of collieries too. Coal mines. All through Yorkshire, they were,” Olivia whispered. “But they started closing in the 1980s. It’s been ten years now since the last one closed.”

Harriet might be onto something with this theory after all, because being closed didn’t mean the contamination stopped. The negative impact on water supplies from coal mining was well-documented. She knew she shouldn’t, but she surreptitiously did an internet search on her smartphone to confirm that.

Anthony glanced at her phone. “Lead was mined in the Yorkshire Dales all the way back to Roman times.”

“Isn’t there a potash mine still operating near Whitby?” Polly whispered.

Aunt Jinny shushed them all, redirecting their focus to Pastor Will. He was explaining how the passage from Job used mining as an analogy for searching for wisdom. “There are so many things we don’t know, that we can’t see or seem to understand. And faith is trusting that God knows, that God sees, and that He understands.

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