Conspicuously before the postoffice, grocery store, on the town pump and the fence of the village church, some time later, the soldier accordingly nailed the posters, followed by an inquisitive group, who read the following announcement: “Tuesday, ‘The Honeymoon’; Wednesday, ‘The School for Scandal’; Thursday, ‘The Stranger,’ with diverting specialties; Friday, ‘Romeo and Juliet’; Saturday, ‘Hamlet,’ with a Jig by Kate Duran. At the Travelers’ Friend. Entrance Free.”
“They’re going to play after all,” commented the blacksmith’s wife.
“I don’t see much harm in ‘Hamlet,’” said the supervisor’s yokemate. “It certainly ain’t frivolous.”
“Let’s go to ‘The Honeymoon’?” suggested an amorous carl to his slip-slop Sal.
“Go ’long!” she retorted with barn-yard bashfulness.
“Did you ever see ‘The School for Scandal’?” asked the smithy’s good wife.
“Once,” confessed the town official’s faded consort, her worn face lighting dreamily. “It was on our wedding trip to New York. Silas warn’t so strict then.”
Amid chit-chat, so diverting, Saint-Prosper finished “posting” the town. It had been late in the afternoon before he had altered the posters and set out on his paradoxical mission; the sun was declining when he returned homeward. Pausing at a cross-road, he selected a tree for one of his remaining announcements. It was already adorned with a dodger, citing the escape 56 of a negro slave and offering a reward for his apprehension; not an uncommon document in the North in those days.
As the traveler read the bill his expression became clouded, cheerless. Around him the fallen leaves gave forth a pleasant fragrance; caught in the currents of the air, they danced in a circle and then broke away, hurrying helter-skelter in all directions.
“Poor devil!” he muttered. “A fugitive––in hiding––”