positions. The outbreak subsided as
suddenly as it had arisen: Colonel Flitcroft pulled Mr. Arp down into
his chair again, and it was all over.

Greater heat than that of these blazing days could not have kept one of
the sages from attending the conclave now. For the battle was on in
Canaan: and here, upon the National House corner, under the shadow of
the west wall, it waxed even keener. Perhaps we may find full
justification for calling what was happening a battle in so far as we
restrict the figure to apply to this one spot; else where, in the
Canaan of the Tocsin, the conflict was too one-sided. The Tocsin had
indeed tried the case of Happy Fear in advance, had convicted and
condemned, and every day grew more bitter. Nor was the urgent vigor of
its attack without effect. Sleepy as Main Street seemed in the heat,
the town was incensed and roused to a tensity of feeling it had not
known since the civil war, when, on occasion, it had set out to hang
half a dozen "Knights of the Golden Circle." Joe had been hissed on
the street many times since the inimical clerk had whistled at him.
Probably demonstrations of that sort would have continued had he
remained in Canaan; but for almost a month he had been absent and his
office closed, its threshold gray with dust. There were people who
believed that he had run away again, this time never to return; among
those who held to this opinion being Mrs. Louden and her sister, Joe's
step-aunt. Upon only one point was everybody agreed: that twelve men
could not be found in the county who could be so far persuaded and
befuddled by Louden that they would dare to allow Happy Fear to escape.
The women of Canaan, incensed by the terrible circumstance of the case,
as the Tocsin colored it--a man shot down in the act of begging his
enemy's forgiveness--clamored as loudly as the men: there was only the
difference that the latter vociferated for the hanging of Happy; their
good ladies used the word "punishment."

And yet, while the place rang with condemnation of the little man in
the jail and his attorney, there were voices, here and there, uplifted
on the other side. People existed, it astonishingly appeared, who
LIKED Happy Fear. These were for the greater part obscure and even
darkling in their lives, yet quite demonstrably human beings, able to
smile, suffer, leap, run, and to entertain fancies; even to have,
according to their degree, a certain rudimentary sense of right an