There was meat for gossip a plenty
in Canaan that afternoon and evening;
there were rumors that ran
from kitchen to parlor, and rumors
that ran from parlor to kitchen; speculations
that detained housewives in talk across
front gates; wonderings that held cooks in converse
over shadeless back fences in spite of the heat;
and canards that brought Main Street clerks
running to the shop doors to stare up and down the
sidewalks. Out of the confusion of report, the
judicious were able by evenfall to extract a fair
history of this day of revolution. There remained
no doubt that Joe Louden was in attendance at
the death-bed of Eskew Arp, and somehow it
came to be known that Colonel Flitcroft, Squire
Buckalew, and Peter Bradbury had shaken hands
with Joe and declared themselves his friends.
There were those (particularly among the relatives
of the hoary trio) who expressed the opinion that
the Colonel and his comrades were too old to be
responsible and a commission ought to sit on them;
nevertheless, some echoes of Eskew's last "argument"
to the conclave had sounded in the town
and were not wholly without effect.

Everywhere there was a nipping curiosity to
learn how Judge Pike had "taken" the strange
performance of his daughter, and the eager were