It savored of a delightful intimacy which Jesse Hogarty accorded to few men.
CHAPTER XVI
In all that hill town’s history no period had ever before been so filled with sensation as was that one which opened with the flight of Judge Maynard’s yellow-wheeled buckboard along the main street of Boltonwood to herald the passing of the last of the line of men who had given the village its name.
One by one, in bewildering succession, climax after climax had piled itself upon those which already had left the white-haired circle of regulars about the Tavern stove breathless with fruitless argument and footless conjecture.
Old Jerry’s desertion from the ranks of the old guard over which the Judge had ruled with a more than despotic tongue, bursting with bomblike suddenness in their midst that very same night which had seen Young Denny’s dramatic departure, had complicated matters to an inconceivable degree. For, after all, he was the one member of the circle to whom they had all been unconsciously looking for a comprehensive answer to the question which the Judge’s crafty exhibition of the boy’s bruised face had created.
He enjoyed what none of the others could claim an absolutely incontestable excuse for visiting the old, weatherbeaten farmhouse on the hill above town––and in his official capacity they felt, too, that he might venture a few tentative inquiries at least, which, coming from any one else, might have savored of indelicacy.
Not but what the circle had enjoyed Judge Maynard’s masterly recital, for it had held them as one man. But they were hungry also for facts––facts which could convince as well as entertain. Even the Judge himself had planned upon Old Jerry’s co-operation; he had had it in mind to be patronizingly lenient that night; that is, after that first rebuke which was to leave him the undisputed master of the situation.