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The fairly good town brass band had promised to be on hand, and play during the best part of the afternoon. Then there would be a host of refreshment booths at which Scranton's fairest daughters would preside, accompanied in each instance by a matron of mature years, to lend dignity to the occasion.
The terminus of the road at Cleveland was originally intended to be on Scranton's Flats, but it was afterwards determined to bring the road across the river to the site of the old New England House.
Farendell was Duffy; he had often wondered if that mysterious partner of Scranton's had been deceived with the others, or had ever suspected that the body discovered in the counting-house was Scranton's. If not, he must have accepted the strange coincidence that Scranton had disappeared also the same night.
Mary Scranton's life and death, though they possessed the elements of a tragedy, were divested of their tragic interest by this calm and pensive New-England atmosphere. Nothing so romantic had happened there for many years, or did occur again for more; yet nobody knew a romance had come and gone.
About the year 1820 he removed to Cleveland, where he engaged in business and remained until his death, of apoplexy, on the 9th of April, 1858, having just completed his sixty-sixth year. In the later years of the village of Cleveland and the early days of the city, Mr. Scranton's leather and dry goods store, at the corner of Superior and Water streets, was a well known business landmark.
Suddenly he stopped, transfixed by a later paragraph. For an instant he failed to grasp its full significance. Then he read it again, the words imprinting themselves on his senses with a slow deliberation that seemed to him as passionless as Scranton's utterances on that fateful night. "The loss of life, it is now feared, is much greater than at first imagined.
The knowledge of this might have given him a momentary superiority over his antagonist had Scranton's motive been a purely selfish or malignant one, but as it was not, and as he may have had some instinctive idea of Farendell's feeling also, it made his ultimatum appear the more passionless and fateful. And it was this quality which perhaps caused Farendell to burst out with desperate abruptness,
And when he did make that stroke vain were the frantic efforts of the usually dependable Leonard to block its amazing passage; for almost before he swung he heard the plug of the puck landing in the wire cage which he was especially set to guard, and knew that another tally had been added to Scranton's growing score. The conditions had changed, and the shoe was now on the other foot.
The person who, perhaps, had more influence than any of the others, and was more vehement in deriding the "foolish expenditure of funds along such silly lines, instead of trying to elevate the standard of reading among Scranton's young people," was the rich widow, Mrs. Jardine. She had a son named Claude, whose life was rendered miserable by the lofty ambition of his mother to make him a genius.
A tall form separated itself from the group of workmen and came gallantly forward. "Madame," said a rich, hearty voice, "if you'll just allow me, I'll tackle that pitcher and tote it in for you. Jarvis is my name, Colonel Bob Jarvis, well-borer. We struck a ten-inch flow down at Scranton's last week, and rather knocked the bottom out of things around here."
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