ght call a town character. His name is Mr. Dudley Stackpole."

In all respects save one, Squire Jonas, telling the inquiring stranger
the tale, had the rights of it. There were town characters aplenty he
might have described. A long-settled community with traditions behind it
and a reasonable antiquity seems to breed curious types of men and women
as a musty closet breeds mice and moths. This town of ours had its town
mysteries and its town eccentrics--its freaks, if one wished to put the
matter bluntly; and it had its champion story-teller and its champion
liar and its champion guesser of the weight of livestock on the hoof.

There was crazy Saul Vance, the butt of cruel small boys, who deported
himself as any rational creature might so long as he walked a straight
course; but so surely as he came to where the road forked or two streets
crossed he could not decide which turning to take and for hours angled
back and forth and to and fro, now taking the short cut to regain the
path he just had quitted, now retracing his way over the long one, for
all the world like a geometric spider spinning its web. There was old
Daddy Hannah, the black root-and-yarb doctor, who could throw spells and
weave charms and invoke conjures. He wore a pair of shoes which had been
worn by a man who was hanged, and these shoes, as is well known, leave
no tracks which a dog will nose after or a witch follow, or a ha'nt.
Small boys did not gibe at Daddy Hannah, you bet you! There was Major
Burnley, who lived for years and years in the same house with the wife
with whom he had quarreled and never spoke a word to her or she to him.
But the list is overlong for calling. With us, in that day and time,
town characters abounded freely. But Mr. Dudley Stackpole was more than
a town character. He was that, it is true, but he was something else
besides; something which tabbed him a mortal set apart from his fellow
mortals. He was the town's chief figure of tragedy.

If you had ever seen him once you could shut your eyes and see him over
again. Yet about him there was nothing impressive, nothing in his port
or his manner to catch and to hold a stranger's gaze. With him,
physically, it was quite the other way about. He was a short spare man,
very gentle in his movements, a toneless sort of man of a palish gray
cast, who always wore sad-colored clothing. He would make you think of a
man molded out of a fog; almost he was like a man made of smoke. His
mode o