It was the feeling and the sense of a dismal exhalation from
him, an unhealthy and unnatural mental effluvium that served so
indelibly to fix the bodily image of him in the brainpans of casual and
uninformed passers-by. The brand of Cain was not on his brow. By every
local standard of human morality it did not belong there. But built up
of morbid elements within his own conscience, it looked out from his
eyes and breathed out from his person.
So year by year, until the tally of the years rolled up to more than
thirty, he went his lone unhappy way. He was in the life of the town, to
an extent, but not of it. Always, though it was the daylit life of the
town which knew him. Excepting once only. Of this exceptional instance a
story was so often repeated that in time it became permanently embalmed
in the unwritten history of the place.
On a summer's afternoon, sultry and close, the heavens suddenly went all
black, and quick gusts smote the earth with threats of a great
windstorm. The sun vanished magically; a close thick gloaming fell out
of the clouds. It was as though nightfall had descended hours before its
ordained time. At the city power house the city electrician turned on
the street lights. As the first great fat drops of rain fell, splashing
in the dust like veritable clots, citizens scurrying indoors and
citizens seeing to flapping awnings and slamming window blinds halted
where they were to peer through the murk at the sight of Mr.
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