morning, in shop and store and office, wherever
people talked of the Cory murder; and that was
everywhere, for the people of Canaan and of the
country roundabout talked of nothing else. Women
chattered of it in parlor and kitchen; men gathered
in small groups on the street and shook their
heads ominously over it; farmers, meeting on the
road, halted their teams and loudly damned the
little man in the Canaan jail; milkmen lingered on
back porches over their cans to agree with cooks
that it was an awful thing, and that if ever any
man deserved hanging, that there Fear deserved it
--his lawyer along with him! Tipsy men hammered
bars with fists and beer-glasses, inquiring
if there was no rope to be had in the town; and
Joe Louden, returning to his office from the little
restaurant where he sometimes ate his breakfast,
heard hisses following him along Main Street. A
clerk, a fat-shouldered, blue-aproned, pimple-
cheeked youth, stood in the open doors of a grocery,
and as he passed, stared him in the face and said
"Yah!" with supreme disgust.

Joe stopped. "Why?" he asked, mildly.

The clerk put two fingers in his mouth and
whistled shrilly in derision. "You'd ort to be
run out o' town!" he exclaimed.

"I believe," said Joe, "that we have never met