“I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but–”
“It’s no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself.”
“I hope so. State it.”
“You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK
WAS that Goodson made to the stranger.”
“It’s perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?”
“I’m past it. Let us make a pallet here; we’ve got to stand watch
till the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack. . . Oh
dear, oh dear–if we hadn’t made the mistake!”
The pallet was made, and Mary said:
“The open sesame–what could it have been? I do wonder what that
remark could have been. But come; we will get to bed now.”
“And sleep?”
“No; think.”
“Yes; think.”
By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their
reconciliation, and were turning in–to think, to think, and toss,
and fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been
which Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark;
that remark worth forty thousand dollars, cash.
The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than
usual that night was this: The foreman of Cox’s paper was the local
representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary
representative, for it wasn’t four times a year that he could
furnish thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was
different. His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant
answer:
“Send the whole thing–all the details–twelve hundred words.”
A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the
proudest man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the
name of Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America,
from Montreal to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the
orange-groves of Florida; and millions and millions of people were
discussing the stranger and his money-sack, and wondering if the
right man would be found, and hoping some more news about the matter
would come soon–right away.
II
Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated–astonished–happy–
vain. Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and
their wives went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming,
and smiling, and congratulating, and saying THIS thing adds a new
word to the dictionary–HADLEYBURG, synonym for INCORRUPTIBLE–
destined to live in dictionaries for ever! And the minor and
unimportant citizens and their wives went around acting in much the
same way. Everybody ran to the bank to see the gold-sack; and
before noon grieved and envious crowds began to flock in from
Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that afternoon and next day
reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and its
history and write the whole thing up anew, and make dashing free-
hand pictures of the sack, and of Richards’s house, and the bank,
and the Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the public
square, and the town-hall where the test would be applied and the
money delivered; and damnable portraits of the Richardses, and
Pinkerton the banker, and Cox, and the foreman, and Reverend
Burgess, and the postmaster–and even of Jack Halliday, who was the
loafing, good-natured, no-account, irreverent fisherman, hunter,
boys’ friend, stray-dogs’ friend, typical “Sam Lawson” of the town.
The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all
comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together pleasantly, and enlarged
upon the town’s fine old reputation for honesty and upon this
wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example
would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch-
making in the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild
intoxication of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent
delight–a sort of deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces
bore a look of peaceful, holy happiness.
Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its
beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all,
except by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always
made fun of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out