The showman could restrain himself no longer. He had stood with feet apart as though to root himself in the ground. His hands were hooked behind him.
He hadn’t lost the whole of that Palermo instinct of deference toward the village plutocrat and autocrat who had dominated them all for so many years, even as other Willards had ruled before him. But the choler that drove him forward was the rage of a man who had never learned self-control. His brother leaped to prevent him, but he seized the old man, whipped him off the ground, rushed across the sidewalk and tossed him over the iron fence upon his own lawn, where he lay squawking feebly like a frightened fowl.
The Squire followed, gasping appealing protest, and he stood there clutching the rusty points of the fence when the woman came hastening from the porch.
“I don’t think the Judge is’ hurt a bit, Sylvena,” he faltered. “But he provoked Hime’s awful temper, and I couldn’t stop it.”
Judge Willard had scrambled to his feet, snarling at her when she came to aid him. His rage was now the hysteria of the aged, but after gasping wordlessly he turned and went toward the house. Hiram, his head bowed as though he were ashamed of his burst of rage, had started his caravan, and the crowd followed. Squire Phin remained.
The woman across the fence was mature, yet she had that appearance of freshness that spinsterhood under forty years preserves in the little details. Her face had been flushed by her haste, and the colour crept up to the dark hair, that had just a touch of frost at the temples.
“And it is your brother come home, Phineas?” she asked, gazing after the picturesque spectacle.
“It is Hiram.” His tone was wistful.
“He seems to be fully as—as muscular as ever,” she said, with a little flash of her eyes.
As he seemed searching his mind for suitable apology, she said hastily: