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"Don't let Lawyer Louden bamboozle you!" "Hang him!" "Tar and feathers fer ye ef ye don't hang him!" These were the mildest threats, and Joe Louden, watching from an upper window of the Court-house, observed with a troubled eye how certain of the jury shrank from the pressure of the throng, how the cheeks of others showed sudden pallor.
He could not know THIS! It must be the Beaver Beach scandal. It must be. It could not be THIS not yet! But it MIGHT be. How many knew? Louden, Norbert, Ariel who else? And again the deer took on the strange zebra look.
Eskew's story of the ticket-seller was the only news of Joe Louden that came to Canaan during seven years. Another citizen of the town encountered the wanderer, however, but under circumstances so susceptible to misconception that, in a moment of illumination, he decided to let the matter rest in a golden silence. This was Mr. Bantry.
Upon only one point was everybody agreed: that twelve men could not be found in the county who could be so far persuaded and befuddled by Louden that they would dare to allow Happy Fear to escape.
"It's a Place," he said, with abysmal solemnity, "a Place I shouldn't have mentioned in your presence, Miss Tabor." "What has it to do with Mr. Louden?" The predestined Norbert conceived the present to be a heaven-sent opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe's character, since the Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of this kindness. "He goes there!" he proceeded heavily.
This was the serious and seemly parade, the propriety of whose behavior was to-day almost disintegrated when the lady of the bridge walked up the street in the shadow of a lacy, lavender parasol carried by Joseph Louden. The congregation of the church across the Square, that to which Joe's step-aunt had been late, was just debouching, almost in mass, upon Main Street, when these two went by.
"It's hard to breathe," gasped the old man. "I'm pretty near the big road. Joe Louden " "Yes?" "You'd have been willing willing to change places with me just now when Airie " Joe laid his hand on his, and Eskew smiled again. "I thought so! And, Joe " "Yes?" "You always always had the the best of that joke between us. Do you you suppose they charge admission up there?" His eyes were lifted.
He was still pale and thin; his eyebrows had the same crook, one corner of his mouth the same droop; he was only an inch or so taller, not enough to be thought a tall man; and yet, for a few moments the father did not recognize his son, but stared at him, inquiring his business. During those few seconds of unrecognition, Mr. Louden was somewhat favorably impressed with the stranger's appearance.
Louden drew in her skirts grimly as her step-son passed her in the mournful procession through the hall.
The stricken fat one could not understand how it came about that he had blurted out the damning confession that he had visited Beaver Beach. When he tried to solve the puzzle, his mind refused the strain, became foggy and the terrors of his position acute. Was he, like Joe Louden, to endure the ban of Canaan, and like him stand excommunicate beyond the pale because of Martin Pike's displeasure?
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