NORBERT WAITS FOR JOE:
There was meat for gossip a plenty in Canaan that afternoon and evening;there were rumors that ran from kitchen to parlor, and rumors that ran from parlor to kitchen; speculations that detained housewives in talk across front gates; wonderings that held cooks in converse over shadeless back fences in spite of the heat;and canards that brought Main Street clerks running to the shop doors to stare up and down the sidewalks.Out of the confusion of report, the judicious were able by evenfall to extract a fair history of this day of revolution.There remained no doubt that Joe Louden was in attendance at the death-bed of Eskew Arp, and somehow it came to be known that Colonel Flitcroft, Squire Buckalew, and Peter Bradbury had shaken hands with Joe and declared themselves his friends.
There were those (particularly among the relatives of the hoary trio) who expressed the opinion that the Colonel and his comrades were too old to be responsible and a commission ought to sit on them;nevertheless, some echoes of Eskew's last "argument"to the conclave had sounded in the town and were not wholly without effect.
Everywhere there was a nipping curiosity to learn how Judge Pike had "taken" the strange performance of his daughter, and the eager were much disappointed when it was truthfully reported that he had done and said very little.He had merely discharged both Sam Warden and Sam's wife from his service, the mild manner of the dismissal almost unnerving Mr.Warden, although he was fully prepared for bird-shot; and the couple had found immediate employment in the service of Ariel Tabor.