第64章

In this case, if there is any miscarriage of justice, Iwill say here and now that in my opinion the people of this county will be sorely tempted; and while I do not believe in lynch-law, yet if that should be the result it is my unalterable conviction that the vigilantes may well turn their attention to the lawyers--OR LAWYER--who bring about such miscarriage.I am sick of it.' "The Tocsin did not print the interview it obtained from Louie Farbach--the same Louie Farbach who long ago had owned a beer-saloon with a little room behind the bar, where a shabby boy sometimes played dominoes and "seven-up" with loafers:

not quite the same Louie Farbach, however, in outward circumstance: for he was now the brewer of Farbach Beer and making Canaan famous.His rise had been Teutonic and sure; and he contributed one-twentieth of his income to the German Orphan Asylum and one-tenth to his party's campaign fund.The twentieth saved the orphans from the county, while the tithe gave the county to his party.

He occupied a kitchen chair, enjoying the society of some chickens in a wired enclosure behind the new Italian villa he had erected in that part of Canaan where he would be most uncomfortable, and he looked woodenly at the reporter when the latter put his question.

"Hef you any aguaintunce off Mitster Fear?"he inquired, in return, with no expression decipherable either upon his Gargantuan face or in his heavily enfolded eyes.

"No, sir," replied the reporter, grinning."Inever ran across him.""Dot iss a goot t'ing fer you," said Mr.Farbach, stonily."He iss not a man peobles bedder try to run across.It iss what Gory tried.Now Gory iss dead."The reporter, slightly puzzled, lit a cigarette.

"See here, Mr.Farbach," he urged, "I only want a word or two about this thing; and you might give me a brief expression concerning that man Louden besides: just a hint of what you think of his influence here, you know, and of the kind of sharp work he practises.Something like that.""I see," said the brewer, slowly."Happy Fear I hef knowt for a goot many years.He iss a goot frient of mine.""What?""Choe Louten iss a bedder one," continued Mr.

Farbach, turning again to stare at his chickens.

"Git owit."

"What?"

"Git owit," repeated the other, without passion, without anger, without any expression whatsoever.

"Git owit."

The reporter's prejudice against the German nation dated from that moment.

There were others, here and there, who were less self-contained than the brewer.A farm-hand struck a fellow laborer in the harvest-field for speaking ill of Joe; and the unravelling of a strange street fight, one day, disclosed as its cause a like resentment, on the part of a blind broom-maker, engendered by a like offence.The broom-maker's companion, reading the Tocsin as the two walked together, had begun the quarrel by remarking that Happy Fear ought to be hanged once for his own sake and twice more "to show up that shyster Louden." Warm words followed, leading to extremely material conflict, in which, in spite of his blindness, the broom-maker had so much the best of it that he was removed from the triumphant attitude he had assumed toward the person of his adversary, which was an admirable imitation of the dismounted St.George and the Dragon, and conveyed to the jail.Keenest investigation failed to reveal anything oblique in the man's record; to the astonishment of Canaan, there was nothing against him.He was blind and moderately poor;but a respectable, hard-working artisan, and a pride to the church in which he was what has been called an "active worker." It was discovered that his sensitiveness to his companion's attack on Joseph Louden arose from the fact that Joe had obtained the acquittal of an imbecile sister of the blind man, a two-thirds-witted woman who had been charged with bigamy.

The Tocsin made what it could of this, and so dexterously that the wrath of Canaan was one farther jot increased against the shyster.Ay, the town was hot, inside and out.

Let us consider the Forum.Was there ever before such a summer for the "National House"corner? How voices first thundered there, then cracked and piped, is not to be rendered in all the tales of the fathers.One who would make vivid the great doings must indeed "dip his brush in earthquake and eclipse"; even then he could but picture the credible, and must despair of this: the silence of Eskew Arp.Not that Eskew held his tongue, not that he was chary of speech--no!

O tempora, O mores! NO! But that he refused the subject in hand, that he eschewed expression upon it and resolutely drove the argument in other directions, that he achieved such superbly un-Arplike inconsistency; and with such rich material for his sardonic humors, not at arm's length, not even so far as his finger-tips, but beneath his very palms, he rejected it: this was the impossible fact.

Eskew--there is no option but to declare--was no longer Eskew.It is the truth; since the morning when Ariel Tabor came down from Joe's office, leaving her offering of white roses in that dingy, dusty, shady place, Eskew had not been himself.