Part 5 (2/2)

Methodically, mechanically, his mind went back over the days when he had gone to school with Jed Conway--the same Jed The Red whom the whole town was now welcoming as ”our own Jeddy,” and the longer he pondered the greater the problem became.

It was hard to understand. From his point of view comprehension was impossible, at that instant. For in those earlier days, when anybody had ever mentioned Jed Conway at all, it had been only to describe him as ”good for nothing,” or something profanely worse. Young Denny remembered him vividly as a big, freckle-faced, bow-legged boy with red bristly hair--the biggest boy in the school--who never played but what he cheated, and always seemed able to lie himself out of his thievery.

But most vividly of all, he recalled that day when Jed Conway had disappeared from the village between sundown and dawn and failed to return. That was the same day they discovered the shortage in the old wooden till at Benson's corner store. And now Jed Conway had come home, or at least his fame had found its way back, and even Old Jerry, whipping madly toward the village to share in his reflected glory, had, for all the perfection of his ”system,” failed to leave the very bundle of mail which he had come to deliver.

For a long time Young Denny sat and tried to straighten it out in his brain--and failed entirely. It had grown very dark--too dark for him to make out the words upon it--when he reached into the pocket of his gray flannel s.h.i.+rt and drew out the card which he had found lying upon the kitchen floor that previous Sat.u.r.day night, after he had lighted Dryad Anderson on her way home through the thickets. But he did not need, or even attempt, to read it.

”And it took me a month,” he said aloud to the empty air before him, ”almost a month to save fifteen dollars.”

He rose at the words, stiffly, for the chill air had tightened his muscles, and stood a moment indecisively contemplating the lights which were beginning to glimmer through the dusk in the hollow, before he, too, took the long road to the village down which Old Jerry had rattled a scant hour or two before.

CHAPTER VI

The Tavern ”office” was crowded and hazy with acrid blue smoke. Behind the chairs of the favored members of the old circle, who always sat in nightly conclave about the stove, a long row of men lounged against the wall, but the bitter controversies of other nights were still.

Instead, the entire room was leaning forward, hanging breathlessly upon the words of the short fat man who was perched alone upon the worn desk, too engrossed even to notice Young Denny's entrance that night.

The boy stood for a moment, his hand still clasping the k.n.o.b behind him, while his eyes flickered curiously over the heads of the crowd.

Even before he drew the door shut behind him he saw that Judge Maynard's chair was a good foot in advance of all the others, directly in front of the stranger on the desk, and that the rest of the room was furtively taking its cue from him--pounding its knee and laughing immoderately whenever he laughed, or settling back luxuriously whenever the Judge relaxed in his chair.

Subconsciously Young Denny realized that such had always been the recognized order of arrangement, ever since he could remember. The Judge always rode in front in the parades and invariably delivered the Fourth of July oration. Undisputed he held the one vantage point in the room, but over his amply broad back, as near as he dared lean, bent Old Jerry, his thin face working with alternate hope and half fearful uncertainty.

Denny Bolton would have recognized the man on the desk as the ”newspaper writer” from New York from his clothes alone, even without the huge notebook that was propped up on his knees for corroborative evidence. From the soft felt hat, pushed carelessly back from his round, good-natured face, to the tips of his gleaming low shoes, the newcomer was a symphony in many-toned browns. And as Young Denny closed the door behind him he went on talking--addressing the entire throng before him with an easy good-fellows.h.i.+p that bordered on intimate _camaraderie_.

”Just the good old-fas.h.i.+oned stuff,” he was saying; ”the sort of thing that has always been the backbone of the country. That is what I want it to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion who came from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years like Conway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm--a whole lot!

I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones who can give me that--you're the only men who knew him when he was a boy--and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of a youngster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine--now wasn't he?”

The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping a flat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat a little farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judge in jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees, tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back with equal joviality.

”Well, ye-e-s,” he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate.

”Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy.”

One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though he would not be misunderstood.

”Nothing really wrong, of course,” he hurried to add with oratorical emphasis. ”Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous--mischievous and up and coming all the time. But there were folks,” Judge Maynard's voice became heavy with righteous accusation--”it's always that way, you understand--and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's own village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I--I knew better!

Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits--that's what I always thought. And I said it, too--many's the time I said----”

The big shouldered boy near the door s.h.i.+fted his position a little.

He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension.

”----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?” he interrupted knowingly.

The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth.

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