There was comfort in this. Others might feel like this man. Matters were not so threatening as Louie feared. There might not be a meeting after all, and if there were nothing rash would be done. His presence was not needed, even if he were willing to go, and reasoning thus Herbert went home in a comparatively quiet state of mind. When dinner was over he started again for the main street of the town. If there was to be a meeting he would like to know it and see who attended it himself unseen. He accordingly took his post in the dark alcove and watched to see who came, wondering that there were so many and fearing a little for the result. He heard Louie’s step as she came up the stairs, but did not suspect who it was until as she stopped under the gas jet to shake the water from her dripping cloak and push her damp hair from her forehead, he saw her face, and nearly fell off the box in his surprise.
He knew why she was there, and his first impulse was to go to her and stand by her and make her cause his own. Then, thinking that perhaps he would go in later, and that she would produce a better effect at first without him, he let her go alone, and felt himself growing cold and dizzy, when the door opened and the light streamed for a moment out into the hall, showing him several men inside, with Louie in their midst; then the door was closed, and he was in darkness again.
CHAPTER XV
THE SESSION
Judge White had been consulted with regard to the meeting and asked to attend it, but had declined, inasmuch as Mr. Grey only owed him for a quarter’s rent. But he made no effort to restrain the people.
“The dog deserves it, for, of course, he’s been dishonest,” he said. “I have been in the business long enough to know how it can be done, and I always mistrusted he was up to it.”
This did not help matters, and, stormy as was the night, a dozen men or more were in the hall by half-past eight, some of them hardly knowing why they were there, or what they were going to do.
Godfrey Sheldon knew. He had come early, and meant to have Tom Grey punished; and when the meeting was called to order he made an opening speech, in which he went over the ground, dwelling upon Mr. Grey’s extravagance and the money he had spent, and which he could not have come honestly by.
“No, sir,” he said: “He has used our money unlawfully for his own purposes, and it’s all gone—every sumarkee of it gambled away and used for his fine house, and horses, and diamonds, and the Lord knows what. At the very best we shan’t get more than ten cents on a dollar, and what is that? Where have my two thousand dollars gone to? I ask you, and echo answers, Where?”
He was getting quite eloquent, and gesticulating wildly, calling Mr. Grey an embezzler, a gambler, a cheat and a villain, who should be made to feel the weight of the law.
As he said this he brought his fist down upon a shaky little table with such force that it fell with a crash to the floor. Two or three sprang forward to pick it up, and in their excitement they did not hear the door open or see the drooping figure which came in time to hear “feel the weight of the law,” and see the blow which emphasized it.