im a bewildering array of most undesirable foods in a
flotilla of small dishes.

After supper Barstow, following the suit of the other guests, took a
chair on the sidewalk, for a little breeze loafed along the hot street.
Barstow's name had been seen upon the hotel register and the executive
committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club waited upon him in an august
body.

Mr. Pettibone introduced himself and the others. They took chairs and
hitched them close to Barstow, while they poured out in alternate
strains the advantages of Wakefield. Barstow listened politely, but the
empty factory and the dismantled home of Shelby haunted him and made a
dismal background to their advertisements.

It was of the factory that he spoke first:

"The building you wrote me about and offered me rent-free looks a little
small and out of date for our plant. I saw Shelby's factory empty. Could
I rent that at a reasonable figure, do you suppose?"

The committee leaped at the idea with enthusiasm. Spate laughed through
his beard:

"Lord, I reckon the company would rent it to you for almost the price of
the taxes."

Then he realized that this was saying just a trifle too much. They began
to crawfish their way out. But Barstow said, with unconviction:

"There's only one thing that worries me. Why did Shelby close up his
Paradise Powder factory and move away?"

Pettibone urged the reason hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him.
They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down
the factory and then shut down on him, too."

"So he gave up his house and moved away?" said Barstow.

"He gave up his house because he couldn't keep it up," said Amasa
Harbury. "Taxes were pretty steep and nobody would rent it, of course.
It don't belong in a town like Wakefield. Neither did Shelby."

"So he moved away?"

"Moved away, nothin'," sneered Spate. "He went to a boardin'-house and
died there. Left his wife a lot of stock in a broken-down street-car
line, and a no-good electric-light company, and an independent telephone
system that the regulars gobbled up. She's gone back to teachin' school
again. We used our influence to get her old job back. We didn't think we
ought to blame her for the faults of Shelby."

"And what had Shelby done?"

They told him in their own way--treading on one another's toes in their
anxiety; shutting one another up; hunching their chairs together in a
tangle as if their slanders were wares they w