“There, gentlemen and ladies,” Simon P. Groot was saying, “there in that place of vast silences and infolding shadows I met and addressed one who was soon to be no more. ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘you are worn. You are wan. You are weary. Trust the chivalry of one who might be your father. Rest and be comforted as with balm.’ Standing by the roadside, she drooped like a flower. ‘There is no rest for me,’ said she in mournful tones. ‘I must away upon my mission.’ ‘Stay!’ I bade her. ‘Ere you go, but touch your lips to this revivifying flagon. De Lorimer’s Life Giving Tonic, free from intoxicants, poisons, and deception, a boon to the blood, a balm to the nerves, a prop to the flagging spirit.’ She looked, she tasted, she drank. New color sprang to her cheeks. Her form pulsated with joyous vigor. ‘Aged sir,’ said she, ‘I know not your name; but if the blessings of a harried spirit are of avail, your sleep will be sweet this night.’ Of this wonderful balm, ladies and gentlemen of Annalaka, I have still a few bottles left at the low price of half a dollar each. Sickness flies before it. Amalgamating at once with the blood, it clears the precious life fluid of all impurities, and rehabilitates man, woman, and child, body, soul and mind.”
The shrill voice rose and fell, the wide beard quivered with the passion of salesmanship, the gaudy bottles on the shelf were replaced by half-dollars, until the market flagged. Whereupon again the orator took up his tale.
“Ever shall I give thanks for that inestimable privilege, the privilege of having given cheer to one on the brink of a dreadful doom. She vanished, that fair creature, into the forest. I looked at my watch—the unerring, warranted, sixteen-jeweled chronometer which I shall presently have the honor of showing to you at the unexampled price of three-seventy—and saw that the hour was exactly—for these timepieces vary not one fraction of a second in a day—eight-forty-five. When next I looked at the face of Father Time’s trustiest accountant, it was to mark the hour of the horrid shriek that shook my soul; precisely nine-thirty-one. And later, when I heard the dread news, I realized that my ears had thrilled to a death cry.”
He looked about him with a face of controlled emotion. His voice dropped to a throaty and mesmeric gurgle.
“How frail,” he continued: “How frail and uncertain is the life of mankind! Who of these happy faces before me may not to-morrow be bathed in tears for the loss of some loved one? Best be prepared against the time of sorrow. I show you here a unique collection of framed mottoes, suitable alike for the walls of the humblest home or the grandest palace. Within these tasty frames are enshrined comforting mortuary verses, delicately ornamented by the hands of our leading artists, such poetry as distils assuagement upon the wounded heart; and these priceless objects of art and agents of mercy I am distributing at the nominal charge of one dollar each.”
Kent moved away, his chin pressed down upon his chest. He went to the office of Lawyer Adam Bain, and spent an hour waiting, with his feet propped up on the desk. When the lawyer entered Kent remarked:
“You rather put our two official friends in a hole this morning.”
“Just a mite, maybe. But they’ve crawled out. I guess I spoke too quick.”
“How so?”
“Well, if they’d gone ahead and buried the body as it was, we could have had it exhumed. And then we’d have seen what we’d have seen.”