r. The mail had
come in. On this warm spring day the loafers on the boxes and barrels
within the store had crawled out to the bench on the piazza and sat
there in a row. All mental states have their illustrative lives of
body. This shabby row leaned and lopped and settled upon themselves,
into all the lines and curves and downward slants of laziness, and
with rank tobacco-smoke curling about them, like the very languid
breath of it. However, when Eugene Hautville drew near, there was a
slight shuffling stir; a drawling hum of conversation ceased, and
when he entered the store their eyes followed him, bright with
furtive attention. The mill of gossip had ground slowly in this heavy
spring atmosphere, but it had ground steadily. They had been
discussing Madelon Hautville and the breaking off of her marriage
with Lot Gordon. It was village property by this time, and all
tongues were exercised over it.

"Why ain't Lot Gordon goin' to marry her?" they asked each other, and
exchanged answering looks of dark suspicion. The reason for not
marrying which Lot used every means in his power to promulgate--his
fast-failing health--gained little credence. The story came directly
from the doctor's wife that Lot Gordon was no worse than he had been
for the last ten years, and was likely to live ten years to come.
Margaret Bean was said to have told a neighboring woman, who told
another, who in her turn told another, and so started an endless
chain of good authority, that Lot Gordon had never coughed so little
as he did this spring, and "ate like a pig." He was, it is true,
never seen on the highway, but there were those who said he was
abroad again in his old woodland haunts.

"Guess he didn't change his mind about havin' Mad'lon Hautville
'cause he was so much worse than common," they said; "guess when the
time drawed near he was afraid." Margaret Bean was, furthermore, on
good authority reported to have intimated that never, if Madelon had
come to that house while she was in it, would she and her husband
have gone to bed without the scissors in the latch of their bedroom
door.

Lot Gordon, who had forsworn himself to save Madelon, was now, by his
last sacrifice for her, bidding fair to prove what her own assertions
had failed to do--her guilt. He crept out secretly into cover of the
woods, now and then, on a mild day; he could not deny himself that.
But otherwise he stayed close, and coughed hard when there were
listening ears