Watch me! Watch me!"

With runners of the Winesburg team on bases, Joe
Welling became as one inspired. Before they knew what
had come over them, the base runners were watching the
man, edging off the bases, advancing, retreating, held
as by an invisible cord. The players of the opposing
team also watched Joe. They were fascinated. For a
moment they watched and then, as though to break a
spell that hung over them, they began hurling the ball
wildly about, and amid a series of fierce animal-like
cries from the coach, the runners of the Winesburg team
scampered home.

Joe Welling's love affair set the town of Winesburg on
edge. When it began everyone whispered and shook his
head. When people tried to laugh, the laughter was
forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King,
a lean, sad-looking woman who lived with her father and
brother in a brick house that stood opposite the gate
leading to the Winesburg Cemetery.

The two Kings, Edward the father, and Tom the son, were
not popular in Winesburg. They were called proud and
dangerous. They had come to Winesburg from some place
in the South and ran a cider mill on the Trunion Pike.
Tom King was reported to have killed a man before he
came to Winesburg. He was twenty-seven years old and
rode about town on a grey pony. Also he had a long
yellow mustache that dropped down over his teeth, and
always carried a heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in
his hand. Once he killed a dog with the stick. The dog
belonged to Win Pawsey, the shoe merchant, and stood on
the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed it with
one blow. He was arrested and paid a fine of ten
dollars.

Old Edward King was small of stature and when he passed
people in the street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh.
When he laughed he scratched his left elbow with his
right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn
through from the habit. As he walked along the street,
looking nervously about and laughing, he seemed more
dangerous than his silent, fierce-looking son.

When Sarah King began walking out in the evening with
Joe Welling, people shook their heads in alarm. She was
tall and pale and had dark rings under her eyes. The
couple looked ridiculous together. Under the trees they
walked and Joe talked. His passionate eager
protestations of love, heard coming out of the darkness
by the cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of the
trees on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds from
Water