JUDGE VAN DORN SINGS SOME MERRY SONGS
AND THEY TAKE GRANT ADAMS BEHIND A
WHITE DOOR 597
LI IN WHICH WE END AS WE BEGAN AND ALL
LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER 609
LII NOT EXACTLY A CHAPTER BUT RATHER A
Q. E. D. OR A HIC FABULA DOCET 613

IN THE HEART OF A FOOL

CHAPTER I

BEING STAGE DIRECTIONS, AND A CAST OF CHARACTERS

Sunshine and prairie grass--well in the foreground. For the background,
perhaps a thousand miles away or more than half a decade removed in
time, is the American Civil War. In the blue sky a meadow lark's love
song, and in the grass the boom of the prairie chicken's wings are the
only sounds that break the primeval silence, excepting the lisping of
the wind which dimples the broad acres of tall grass--thousand upon
thousand of acres--that stretch northward for miles. To the left the
prairie grass rises upon a low hill, belted with limestone and finally
merges into the mirage on the knife edge of the far horizon. To the
southward on the canvas the prairie grass is broken by the heavy green
foliage above a sluggish stream that writhes and twists and turns
through the prairie, which rises above the stream and meets another
limestone belt upon which the waving ripples of the unmowed grass wash
southward to the eye's reach.

Enter R. U. E. a four-ox team hauling a cart laden with a printing press
and a printer's outfit; following that are other ox teams hauling carts
laden with tents and bedding, household goods, lumber, and provisions. A
four-horse team hauling merchandise, and a span of mules hitched to a
spring wagon come crashing up through the timber by the stream. Men and
women are walking beside the oxen or the teams and are riding in the
covered wagons. They are eagerly seeking something. It is the equality
of opportunity that is supposed to be found in the virgin prairies of
the new West. The men are nearly all veterans of the late war, for the
most part bearded youngsters in their twenties or early thirties. The
women are their fresh young wives. As the procession halts before the
canvas, the men and women begin to unpack the wagons and to line out on
each side of an imaginary street in the prairie. The characters are
discovered as follows:

Amos Adams, a red-bearded youth of twenty-nine and Mary Sands, his wife.
They are printers and begin unpacking and setti