| CONTENTS | ||
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Oliver is Born in October | [1] |
| II | His Relatives and His Neighbors | [15] |
| III | Women in Red Shawls | [36] |
| IV | His Fortune—Good and Bad | [46] |
| V | Oliver is Found To Have a Temper | [65] |
| VI | A Pastor Promises Aid | [85] |
| VII | The Minister’s Wife | [94] |
| VIII | Gliding over a Few Years | [109] |
| IX | Home from the War | [128] |
| X | Idle Days | [140] |
| XI | Old Oliver Disappears | [155] |
| XII | One Way of Looking at It | [166] |
| XIII | The Good Samaritan Pays | [174] |
| XIV | Jealousy Without Love | [185] |
| XV | The Third Fair Lady | [196] |
| XVI | Mr. Joseph Sikes Intervenes | [201] |
| XVII | Mr. Gooch Declares Himself | [212] |
| XVIII | Josephine and Henry the Eighth | [228] |
| XIX | Oliver Complains | [242] |
| XX | Detective Malone | [252] |
| XXI | Love Without Jealousy | [265] |
| XXII | The Corpus Delicti | [281] |
| XXIII | The Brewing of the Storm | [294] |
| XXIV | The Hanging | [308] |
| XXV | Mr. Gooch Sees Things at Night | [322] |
Oliver October
CHAPTER I
OLIVER IS BORN IN OCTOBER
Oliver Baxter, junior, was born on a vile October day in 1890—at seven o’clock in the morning, to be exact. People were more concerned over the plight of a band of gypsies, camped on the edge of the swamp below the Baxter house, however, than they were over the birth of Oliver, although he was a very important child.
The gypsies, journeying southward, had been overtaken by an unexampled and unseasonable blizzard, and citizens of Rumley, in whom curiosity rather than pity had been excited by the misfortunes of the shivering nomads, neglected for the moment that civic pride which heretofore had never failed to respond to any increase in population as provided solely by nature.
First off, Rumley was a very small place at the beginning of the ’nineties. A birth or a death was a matter of profound importance. In the case of the former, all Rumley knew about it months before it happened, and rejoiced. A form of anticipatory interest, amounting almost to impatience, centered upon any expectant mother who ultimately was to add another inhabitant to the town. It was absolutely impossible for a baby to be born in Rumley without the whole town knowing about it within the hour. For that matter, it was equally impossible for any one to die with any degree of privacy unless he went about it deliberately as did Bob Cheever who stole off into the woods back in ’81 and hung himself so cunningly that twenty-four hours passed before his body was discovered.
But, on the whole, the births were what counted most, for, with a true philosophy, the people of Rumley, anticipating that every one had to die some time or other, depended on nature to do its part toward repairing all losses in population by producing a brand-new citizen for every old one who happened to drop put. With a scant five hundred inhabitants, Rumley could ill afford to have its birth rate surpassed by its death rate. The year in which Oliver Baxter, junior, was born had been a lean one; there had been thirteen deaths up to October and only seven births. The surprising mortality was due to the surrender of five old men and three old women who had hung on well beyond the age of ninety, and then, with unbecoming perversity, had combined upon an unusually barren year in which to die.