"The Last Will and Testament of Sarah Hayden Mosely";
then a furious rush for the post office, where every subscriber to the Signal hastily snatched his copy.
The Colonel, bereft of Sasnett's support, slid gently to a sitting posture against the lamp post, his legs wide apart, his red slippers half off. Tears filled his eyes. He wagged his head and sobbed:
"Selah! Selah! Sharper than a sherpent's tooth——" He could not recall the rest, he merely felt it. He was a poor old man, alone, forsaken, he knew that.
No one noticed him. One after another the men filed out, each with the Signal wide open, and with his eyes fastened upon a certain column.
They scattered beneath the various awnings, singly or in groups. Not one addressed his neighbour. Each remained concealed behind the wide enveloping sheets which literally tittered in their trembling hands.
CHAPTER II
Silence is the luxury of wise men and the necessity of fools—which indicates how few men are wise. It is usually the man who does not know what to say, or who has nothing worth saying to impart, that does the talking. It is a form of verbal hysteria, a kind of babbling dust which he stirs by way of concealing his incapacities. And the discourse is more characteristic of women than of the opposite sex, because the lives they live tend to the innocuous, if they do not tend to neuralgia and despair. Silence in a woman is always supernatural. But there are emergencies in life so dumbfounding and sinister in their aspect that they bind the tongue and inform even the foolish with the momentary wisdom of silence and prudence.
Magnis Carter as editor of the Signal was naturally loquacious, especially in print. He published the news with all the fluency which liquefied language permits. It was only in this manner that he was able to fill the few inside columns of the Signal. The outside pages were "patented," of course, and contained matter taken from other papers and magazines. News was so scarce in Jordantown that if a stray dog trotted across the square, it was almost a sensation. Not to know whose dog a dog was afforded an opportunity for speculation and for a change in the topic of conversation.