Then to Elliot: "No; there is no one to--to advise me. I am obliged to decide for myself."

Wesley Elliot returned to Brookville and his unfinished sermon by a long detour which led him over the shoulder of a hill overlooking the valley. He did not choose to examine his motive for avoiding the road along which f.a.n.n.y Dodge would presently return. But as the path, increasingly rough and stony as it climbed the steep ascent, led him at length to a point from whence he could look down upon a toy village, arranged in stiff rows about a toy church, with its tiny pointing steeple piercing the vivid green of many trees, he sat down with a sigh of relief and something very like grat.i.tude.

As far back as he could remember Wesley Elliot had cherished a firm, though somewhat undefined, belief in a quasi-omnipotent power to be reckoned as either hostile or friendly to the purposes of man, showing now a smiling, now a frowning face. In short, that unquestioned, wholly uncontrollable influence outside of a man's life, which appears to rule his destiny. In this role "Providence,"

as he had been taught to call it, had heretofore smiled rather evasively upon Wesley Elliot. He had been permitted to make sure his sacred calling; but he had not secured the earnestly coveted city pulpit. On the other hand, he had just been saved--or so he told himself, as the fragrant June breeze fanned his heated forehead--by a distinct intervention of "Providence" from making a fool of himself.

His subsequent musings, interrupted at length by the shrieking whistle of the noon train as it came to a standstill at the toy railway station, might be termed important, since they were to influence the immediate future of a number of persons, thus affording a fresh ill.u.s.tration of the mysterious workings of "Providence,"

sometimes called "Divine."

Chapter V

There existed in Brookville two separate and distinct forums for the discussion of topics of public and private interest. These were the barroom of the village tavern, known as the Brookville House, and Henry Daggett's General Store, located on the corner opposite the old Bolton Bank Building. Mr. Daggett, besides being Brookville's leading merchant, was also postmaster, and twice each day withdrew to the official privacy of the office for the transaction of United States business. The post office was conveniently located in one corner of Mr. Daggett's store and presented to the inquiring eye a small gla.s.s window, which could be raised and lowered at will by the person behind the part.i.tion, a few numbered boxes and a slit, marked "Letters."

In the evening of the day on which Miss Lydia Orr had visited the old Bolton house in company with Deacon Whittle, both forums were in full blast. The wagon-shed behind the Brookville House sheltered an unusual number of "rigs," whose owners, after partaking of liquid refreshment dispensed by the oily young man behind the bar, by common consent strolled out to the veranda where a row of battered wooden armchairs invited to reposeful consideration of the surprising events of the past few days.

The central chair supported the large presence of "Judge" Fulsom, who was dispensing both information and tobacco juice.

"The practice of the legal profession," said the Judge, after a brief period devoted to the ruminative processes, "is full of surprises."

Having spoken, Judge Fulsom folded his fat hands across the somewhat soiled expanse of his white waistcoat and relapsed into a weighty silence.

"They was sayin' over to the post office this evening that the young woman that cleaned up the church fair has bought the old Bolton place. How about it, Jedge?"

Judge Fulsom grunted, as he leveled a displeased stare upon the speaker, a young farmer with a bibulous eye and slight swagger of defiance. At the proper moment, with the right audience, the Judge was willing to impart information with lavish generosity. But any attempt to force his hand was looked upon as a distinct infringement of his privilege.

"You want to keep your face shut, Lute, till th' Jedge gets ready to talk," counseled a middle-aged man who sat tilted back in the next chair. "Set down, son, and cool off."

"Well, you see I got to hurry along," objected the young farmer impatiently, "and I wanted to know if there was anything in it. Our folks had money in the old bank, an' we'd give up getting anything more out the smash years ago. But if the Bolton place has actually been sold--"

He finished with a prolonged whistle.

The greatness in the middle chair emitted a grunt.

"Humph!" he muttered, and again, "Hr-m-m-ph!"

"It would be surprising," conceded the middle-aged man, "after all these years."

"Considerable many of th' creditors has died since," piped up a lean youth who was smoking a very large cigar. "I s'pose th' children of all such would come in for their share--eh, Judge?"

Judge Fulsom frowned and pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"The proceedings has not yet reached the point you mention, Henry,"

he said. "You're going a little too fast."

n.o.body spoke, but the growing excitement took the form of a shuffling of feet. The Judge deliberately lighted his pipe, a token of mental relaxation. Then from out the haze of blue smoke, like the voice of an oracle from the seclusion of a shrine, issued the familiar recitative tone for which everybody had been waiting.

"Well, boys, I'll tell you how 'twas: Along about ten minutes of twelve I had my hat on my head, and was just drawing on my linen duster with the idea of going home to dinner, when I happened to look out of my office window, and there was Deacon Whittle--and the girl, just coming up th' steps. In five minutes more I'd have been gone, most likely for the day."

"Gosh!" breathed the excitable young farmer.

The middle-aged man sternly motioned him to keep silence.

"I s'pose most of you boys saw her at the fair last night," proceeded the Judge, ignoring the interruption. "She's a nice appearing young female; but n.o.body'd think to look at her--"

He paused to ram down the tobacco in the glowing bowl of his pipe.

"Well, as I was saying, she'd been over to the Bolton house with the Deacon. Guess we'll have to set the Deacon down for a right smart real-estate boomer. We didn't none of us give him credit for it. He'd got the girl all worked up to th' point of bein' afraid another party'd be right along to buy the place. She wanted an option on it."

"Shucks!" again interrupted the young farmer disgustedly. "Them options ain't no good. I had one once on five acres of timber, and--"

"Shut up, Lute!" came in low chorus from the spell-bound audience.

"Wanted an option," repeated Judge Fulsom loudly, "just till I could fix up the paper. 'And, if you please,' said she, 'I'd like t' pay five thousand dollars for the option, then I'd feel more sure.' And before I had a chance to open my mouth, she whips out a check-book."

"Gr-reat jumping Judas!" cried the irrepressible Lute, whose other name was Parsons. "Five thousand dollars! Why, the old place ain't worth no five thousand dollars!"

Judge Fulsom removed his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the half-burned tobacco, blew through the stem, then proceeded to fill and light it again. From the resultant haze issued his voice once more, bland, authoritative, reminiscent.

"Well, now, son, that depends on how you look at it. Time was when Andrew Bolton wouldn't have parted with the place for three times that amount. It was rated, I remember, at eighteen thousand, including live stock, conveyances an' furniture, when it was deeded over to the a.s.signees. We sold out the furniture and stock at auction for about half what they were worth. But there weren't any bidders worth mentioning for the house and land. So it was held by the a.s.signees--Cephas Dix, Deacon Whittle and myself--for private sale.

We could have sold it on easy terms the next year for six thousand; but in process of trying to jack up our customer to seven, we lost out on the deal. But now--"

Judge Fulsom arose, brushed the tobacco from his waistcoat front and cleared his throat.

"Guess I'll have to be getting along," said he; "important papers to look over, and--"

"A female woman, like her, is likely to change her mind before tomorrow morning," said the middle-aged man dubiously. "And I heard Mrs. Solomon Black had offered to sell her place to the young woman for twenty-nine hundred--all in good repair and neat as wax. She might take it into her head to buy it."

"Right in the village, too," growled Lute Parsons. "Say, Jedge, did you give her that option she was looking for? Because if you did she can't get out of it so easy."

Judge Fulsom twinkled pleasantly over his bulging cheeks.

"I sure did accommodate the young lady with the option, as aforesaid," he vouchsafed. "And what's more, I telephoned to the Gren.o.ble Bank to see if her check for five thousand dollars was O.

K.... Well; so long, boys!"

He stepped ponderously down from the piazza and turned his broad back on the row of excited faces.

"Hold on, Jedge!" the middle-aged man called after him. "Was her check any good? You didn't tell us!"

The Judge did not reply. He merely waved his hand.

"He's going over to the post office," surmised the lean youth, shifting the stub of his cigar to the corner of his mouth in a knowing manner.

He lowered his heels to the floor with a thud and prepared to follow.

Five minutes later the bartender, not hearing the familiar hum of voices from the piazza, thrust his head out of the door.

"Say!" he called out to the hatchet-faced woman who was writing down sundry items in a ledger at a high desk. "The boys has all cleared out. What's up, I wonder?"