There was a crowd around the bulletin-board of the Gentryville Chronicle, bearing a paragraph from one of the big city dailies. People stopped to read, and pushed on with shocked faces to tell their neighbours that Wexley Snathers, trying to stop the stampede at the burning of his circus, had been fatally trampled and had since died in the hospital from internal injuries.
Old Mrs. Snathers sat in her darkened house, tense and wild-eyed, not knowing at what hour Wexley's mangled body might be laid before her. Sade refused to believe the report, until confronted with the staring headlines in which Wexley's name appeared in huge black letters. Then her remorse and self-reproach were almost more than she could endure.
It was towards night of the third day after the appearance of the bulletin that the train pulling into Gentryville bore among its passengers a tired-looking man on crutches. His head was bandaged, and his gray linen duster bore marks of a long journey. Climbing down the steps farthest from the station, he swung himself along on his crutches toward the little coffin shop, and the smell of varnish that met him on entering was like the greeting of an old friend. Ignorant of the impression current about his death, he had gone first to the shop to get his bearings before meeting the eye and tongue of the village public.
Sitting beside the open back window, his first feeling was one of relief. The circus was a thing of the past. The lawyer had assured him that by some hook or crook, best known to his profession, he could undertake to settle all suits to the satisfaction of his client. He had also undertaken to consign the freaks to some public institution for the feeble-minded, and for his services he was willing to accept the very things that had grown to be the bane of Wexley's existence,—the remnants of the circus.
Here he was at last, a free man, although with a sore head and a sprained ankle. The next thought was not so pleasant. He was farther from winning Sade than he had ever been before, by the whole amount of his doctors' bills and travelling expenses. Had it not been for his feeling that it was almost sacrilege to curse a dead man, he would then and there have anathematized Pole with a glad heart but with a vicious gnashing of teeth.
As he sat there in the deepening spring twilight, a tall comely figure came through the little gate at the side of his shop and started across his back yard. It was the short cut towards his home. He started forward eagerly as he recognized the familiar outlines in the dusk, and the slow sweep of skirts. He did not stop to wonder why she should be going to his mother's just then. His only feeling was joy that his eyes rested upon her. It seemed years since he had seen her last. He knocked on the window-pane to attract her attention.
"Sade! Oh, Sade!" he cried, leaning out of the window, his linen duster gleaming ghostly gray in the twilight.
The startling apparition, looming thus suddenly out of the coffin shop, froze the woman's very soul. With a terrified cry she sank weakly in a heap on the ground, and sat there shivering and gibbering, tears of fright streaming down her cold face.