clear a way to the outer
entrance with one haughty flip of his free hand.

Hours later that same day, when the tumult in the long main room of
the gymnasium had hushed and the apathetic Legs and his helper had
turned again to their endless task of grooming the waxed floor,
Dennison, the manager of Jed The Red, sitting in that same chair which
Morehouse had occupied, cuddling one knee in his hands, fairly basked
in that same smile. The purring perfection of Hogarty's discourse was
enticing. The absurd simplicity of his plan, which he admitted must,
after all, be credited to the astuteness of Dennison himself, was more
than alluring. But that smile was the quintessence of hypnotic
flattery.

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 patro