avement; there was the
scraping of many feet as the crowd pushed forward, a mere instant of
silence as they read:

"_The Last Will and Testament of Sarah Hayden Mosely_";

then a furious rush for the post office, where every subscriber to the
_Signal_ hastily snatched his copy.

The Colonel, bereft of Sasnett's support, slid gently to a sitting
posture against the lamp post, his legs wide apart, his red slippers
half off. Tears filled his eyes. He wagged his head and sobbed:

"Selah! Selah! Sharper than a sherpent's tooth----" He could not recall
the rest, he merely felt it. He was a poor old man, alone, forsaken, he
knew that.

No one noticed him. One after another the men filed out, each with the
_Signal_ wide open, and with his eyes fastened upon a certain column.

They scattered beneath the various awnings, singly or in groups. Not one
addressed his neighbour. Each remained concealed behind the wide
enveloping sheets which literally tittered in their trembling hands.

CHAPTER II

Silence is the luxury of wise men and the necessity of fools--which
indicates how few men are wise. It is usually the man who does not know
what to say, or who has nothing worth saying to impart, that does the
talking. It is a form of verbal hysteria, a kind of babbling dust which
he stirs by way of concealing his incapacities. And the discourse is
more characteristic of women than of the opposite sex, because the lives
they live tend to the innocuous, if they do not tend to neuralgia and
despair. Silence in a woman is always supernatural. But there are
emergencies in life so dumbfounding and sinister in their aspect that
they bind the tongue and inform even the foolish with the momentary
wisdom of silence and prudence.

Magnis Carter as editor of the _Signal_ was naturally loquacious,
especially in print. He published the news with all the fluency which
liquefied language permits. It was only in this manner that he was able
to fill the few inside columns of the _Signal_. The outside pages were
"patented," of course, and contained matter taken from other papers and
magazines. News was so scarce in Jordantown that if a stray dog trotted
across the square, it was almost a sensation. Not to know whose dog a
dog was afforded an opportunity for speculation and for a change in the
topic of conversation.

The singular brevity therefore with which Carter published the most
important information ever needed and yearned for in J