In the Brailsford Junction Public Library where the youth of the town came to make love, look at classic nudes, peruse the stimulating success stories to be found in the Alger books, explore the jungles with Livingstone and Stanley, sigh and weep with the Victorian poets, wallow in Cooper, Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott and General Lew Wallace, and if special favorites of the Librarian to visit the restricted shelves where such infamous authors as Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Anatole France and Theodore Dreiser languished in sin....

In this den of vicarious iniquity Peter Brailsford found companions more in harmony with his spirit than in the town itself, which just now was banking around its houses with manure, putting up storm doors, and getting out long underwear, fur caps, and mackinaws.

Here were Hamlets who wandered brooding and mourning even as Peter brooded and mourned. Here were flaming young women who spoke in well-rounded phrases to dashing, intelligent young men who really got somewhere in life. Here were Poetic heroes off on their tremendous Odysseys through wine-dark seas. Soldiers of Fortune easily subduing whole South American Republics.

Reading had been something of a chore while he was still in high school. Now he read for the joy of reading, everything he could get his hands on from Dumas to Ibsen and from Rider Haggard to Shakespeare.

Haggard's terrific tales curdled his blood and started him off on the chain of episodes in his own life which bothered his dreams. The great men who had stood beside his bed at night bringing their huge faces closer and closer until he awoke in a cold sweat; the fear of God which had made his childhood miserable, the early fear of railroad trains which during his fourth and fifth years had sent him terrified into the cellar whenever he heard the distant whistle and the clanging of the bell; night fears as when he had gone down into the woods to find a calf and had heard the stealthy whisper of some unseen thing passing through the deep grass; the fear of death and the absolute finality of damnation.

Other authors started other trains of thought in his mind: nostalgic, wistful, lonely thoughts of the time when he had been lost and his mother and father had come hunting him with a lantern. He had heard them calling far off through the rain-wet woods. They had wrapped him in a blanket and they had driven for miles in the horse and buggy until at last they were at home again; thoughts of his mother coming to tuck him in at night and how desperately he wanted her to come and how fearful he was that she might forget; thoughts of the picnic to which he was not invited and how he had lain beneath the lilac bush watching the other children going by with their picnic baskets. (Often he was homesick for the farm.)

But some of the things he read made him fighting mad, and others made him ambitious. This evening, waiting for Maxine Larabee, he had picked up a book on the Gypsies. A young Gypsy woman stepping from her van had given him what he thought was a tremendous idea....

Why not a camp trailer fitted up with every convenience for a traveling home? If Gypsies could live in vans so could a world of roving motorists. Here was the idea which would make him famous and which would cinch his progressive rise at the "Trailer." He wanted to shout his discovery to everyone in the room. He wanted most desperately to find Maxine Larabee and pour out his hopes and plans.

He could see just how the camp trailer would look. It would be mounted on a one-ton chassis. There would be two small windows on each side and one at the front end fitted out with screens and bright curtains. There would be a door at the back with steps which would let down. Inside there would be one bunk on either side which would fold up against the wall; a folding table; built-in, narrow cupboards and clothes press; a small coal-oil stove for cooking. He felt somewhat at a loss in designing the tiny kitchen. He would have to ask Maxine to help him with that.

It suddenly came over him that after he and Maxine were married they could take their honeymoon in one of his own camp trailers. He was sure that she would be an awfully good sport. He could see her helping to catch their dinner and cooking it over the camp fire. He took a pencil and paper from his pocket, began to sketch rapidly. Despite two years of mechanical drawing at the high school his fingers lagged behind his racing mind.

And now the sketch was finished. But where was Maxine? He was afraid that she would not come.

At eight forty-seven, however, there was a stir near the door. In a new fall ensemble with a hobble skirt that not one of the girls in the room had seen before, and which must have been purchased at some exclusive shop like Bostwick's in Janesville, the Belle of Brailsford Junction made her majestic entry. Cleopatra, or Helen of Troy, or Marie Antoinette could not have slain them more effectively. And, mirabile dictu, she was headed for Peter's table. She sat down directly across from the boy, who, despite his delight, experienced as always an empty feeling in his solar plexus, blurred vision, and cold sweat in the palms of his hands.

"Whatcha reading?" asked Maxine, sticking her gum on the under surface of the library table already plastered with dried chicle in geological strata running back half a decade.

"Uh ... uh ... a book on Gypsies."

"The dirty things," squealed Maxine. "Ee-magine going out in the woods like that with spiders and snakes and everything. They steal and have things in their hair."

"Aw, you're always spoiling everything," said Peter.

"Well, if I'm spoiling everything I'll just run along," said the girl.

"No, don't. Please stay," said Peter.

"You can walk me home," the girl said, smiling archly, "if you don't talk about Gypsies and horrid things like that."

"Can I walk you home?" Peter asked, his disappointment forgotten, his whole being an ecstasy of expectation.

"Sure, you can walk me home," Maxine said. "Walking a girl home don't mean anything. I let lots of fellows walk me home."

"Gee, Maxine. Gee, you're beautiful tonight."

"Did you notice the hobble skirt?"

"Did I notice it! How could I help but notice it?"

"I just coaxed and teased till Mamma had to get it for me."

"Gee, Maxine. You sure look swell in it. I guess you're the prettiest girl in Rock County."

"In Rock County?" asked Maxine, regarding him through large, offended eyes from beneath her coyly-tilted hat brim.

"In the world, I mean," said Peter, feeling his Adam's apple pressing uncomfortably against his high, stiff collar.

"Well, it's nine o'clock," said the girl, as the Librarian began banging Webster's Dictionary on her desk,—the usual signal for closing time.

They walked home together through the fall evening talking of everything except what was near their hearts. She took his arm at the crossing, and the small place where her hand rested was burning hot beneath his coat. There was a big harvest moon rising out of the elm trees from which the leaves were drifting down like large yellow petals. Their breath was white on the frosty air. Far overhead they could hear the honk of the wild geese flying south and the whistle of wings cutting the air.

They stood for a long time at the gate of the Larabee home whose windows gleamed invitingly. A smell of wood-smoke came from the chimney of the fireplace. The wind stirred in the trees.

"Well, ain't you going to kiss me goodnight," Maxine pouted, putting up her lips.

He thought she couldn't have said it. Nothing so wonderful could happen to a country boy. He hesitated, looking down at her loveliness, her lips a trifle apart, her eyes closed, waiting. His blood was singing a chorus through his temples and his ears rang with a strange music.

"Well," she said.

But he had waited too long. From the front door of the Larabee domicile came the booming voice of Mr. Larabee:

"Maxine! You come right in the house, young lady. It's after nine o'clock."

The clock had struck eleven before Peter Brailsford, tossing on his bed, remembered the camp trailer which was to revolutionize motoring, the beautiful little green vans, complete with running water, small kitchens, electric lights run from storage batteries, even curtains at the windows. He went to sleep dreaming of Maxine, of sweet revenge, and of his trailers.

2

A Hallowe'en party at the Methodist Episcopal church in Brailsford Junction was a social event of the first magnitude. The Epworth Leaguers excelled Salem witch-burners in striking terror into one another's hearts and upsetting usually sturdy stomachs. They put skinned grapes in one another's hands in lieu of cats' eyes, poured thick red fluid down each other's necks after having realistically cut the jugular vein with rubber daggers, they removed boards on the dark stairs to the organ loft so that one fell ten feet into a pile of leaves in the woodshed, burned each other with red hot pokers which were in reality slivers of ice, and in general proved themselves worthy disciples of Torquemada. Unholy shrieks from belfry, organ loft, and song-book cupboard kept the girls mildly hysterical. No good young Methodist would have thought of missing the fun.

For days the entertainment committee had been decorating and ripping up the church. Half a cornfield and a wagon load of pumpkins had been transported to the basement and arranged realistically around the pillars and in the corners. Red leaves, jack-o'-lanterns, miles of orange tissue paper, black cats, witches, and tubs for apple bobbing completed the effect in the dimly lit cavern where early on Hallowe'en the young people began to gather.

Peter arrived at seven-thirty wearing a cardboard pumpkin head but otherwise uncostumed. He wanted to parade his stylish new green suit, his tie which would have enraged a bull, and his oxfords with exaggerated bows. Young Brailsford was celebrating his two-dollar-and-a-half raise at the "Trailer" where he had gained the ear of Mike O'Casey with his invention and had been promoted to the role of super office boy in charge of making blue prints for the draftsmen.

Radiating pride and self-assurance he strode across the room toward the knot of Epworth Leaguers in the far corner. But as he approached he felt an electric discharge of uncordiality which could mean but one thing. Bud Spillman, who was holding forth to his coterie of pretty girls and local scions, had been jeering at his expense. Peter was a farm boy and definitely an outsider.

"My, my! Ain't you stylish!" said the erstwhile football hero, dressed for the occasion in Roman toga and laurel wreath.

"Take that back or I'll give you a poke," warned Peter, forgetting that he stood on sacred ground.

"All right, hayseed. You look like you was all dressed up for greasing trailers."

"Come on out in back and I'll show you."

"You might get your new pants all dirty," said Bud.

The crowd sniggered.

"What about your nightshirt?"

"Don't get funny or I'll make you laugh out of the other side of your mouth."

"I'll give you a leave," Peter said.

"I wouldn't dirty my hands fighting a clodhopper. Go clean your cowbarns."

"What about you?" Peter said. "Your old man runs a livery stable."

"Kick in his box car," the boys shouted to Bud, "poke him in the breadbasket."

"Anybody busted in your new shoes?" Bud asked, stamping on one of Peter's toes and spitting on the crushed leather.

Unwanted tears were welling up in Peter's eyes but his voice was brave and scornful. "I dare you. I double-dare you. You yellow Brailsford Junction smart Aleck!"

Then a minor miracle occurred. Maxine Larabee squealed, "Punch him in the nose, Peter. Knock his block off."

That was all the encouragement Peter needed. Dumbfounded but deliriously happy and filled with a soul-satisfying desire to beat Bud Spillman to a pulp he waded into the big fellow while the girls scattered screeching to view the fight from piano-top or chair, and the boys formed a yelling circle about the young battlers.

"Knock him for a gool ... cave in his shanty ... kick him in the belly," advised Bud Spillman's supporters. They also suggested that he beat Peter's ears off, flatten his beezer and knock all his teeth down his throat. Forgetting the fact that they were in the presence of ladies and the Methodist Deity, these same young Christians remembered and used effectively all the forbidden four-letter Anglo-Saxon words.

More agile than his big opponent, lighter on his feet and faster with his punches, Peter slipped in and out with sharp slashing blows which bruised and cut the big football player but did not stop him. Bud's haymakers seldom connected, but when they did they carried the weight of a pile driver behind them.

They clinched, broke apart, flayed the air, drew a little blood, maneuvered about the basement knocking over shocks of corn and stumbling on pumpkins. Bud began to tire while Peter was still as fresh as a daisy. This change in probabilities did not go unnoticed by the ringside who one by one shifted their loyalties to the farm boy. Maxine in particular was cheering for Peter. Now they were all engrossed in telling their new hero just how to mutilate the winded Spillman.

Peter was slipping through the guard of the big fellow time after time. He gave him a final clip to the chin followed by a clout which sent Bud spinning and by accident landed him squarely in a tub filled with water for apple bobbing....

"Boys, boys! In the House of God?" cried the Reverend Mr. Tooton, who had entered at that moment. "Is that Christian? Is that the way Jesus teaches us to treat one another?"

"He started it," blubbered Bud Spillman who was struggling to get out of the icy water.

"Yes, and I finished it," said Peter. He walked over to where the Bully stood crestfallen and dripping, and added in an undertone, "Any more funny stuff at the 'Trailer' and I'll give you a real licking."

"I'm your friend," said Bud. "I always was your friend."

With the ice very thoroughly broken, and everyone at his hilarious ease, the fun began. Peter, a somewhat disheveled but happy ringleader, promoted charades, Blind Man's Bluff, Drop the Handkerchief, Skip-Come-a-Lou, and a version of the Virginia Reel which included elements of the Tango and the Bunny Hug. They splashed and shrieked while bobbing for apples, giggled as they stole kisses in the Den of Horrors and behind the piano, sang at the top of their lungs while playing Four in a Boat and Going to Jerusalem, and ended a perfectly wonderful evening with pumpkin pie and coffee.

Bud Spillman left early.

And that night, for the second time in their lives, Peter and Maxine walked together under the bright autumn stars. They watched, with the superior amusement of teen-age individuals the Hallowe'en antics of the younger hellions who were taking out a year's grievances on Old Man Ottoson who always spoiled the ice on his hill by spreading ashes, Aunt Nellie Fitch who was stingy with her apples, and Grandpa Green who had once peppered with rock salt a boy who was stealing one of his watermelons. It was only tit for tat if the kids now ripped up their board sidewalks, pulled down their gates, and tipped over their backhouses.

Peter lent a hand hoisting a particularly obstreperous billy goat onto the porch roof of Old Lady Perkins' general store, then, with his girl on his arm, strolled leisurely to the Tobacco City Ice Cream Parlor, where beneath pink and green lights reflected in gilt-framed mirrors they lingered long over a concoction known as "Lover's Delight" while the nickel-in-the-slot piano played "Everybody's Doing It."

Feeling deliciously extravagant, he bought her a three pound box of bon bons adorned with large red roses, and they made their way through the crisp cold to Maxine's home on the hill where the girl discovered with joy that her parents were not yet home from their evening of bridge in Janesville, wherefore Peter must come in for a cup of hot cocoa.

Unbelievable delight! To be invited into her house. To be near her, allowed to touch her, and perhaps even to kiss her if he chose.

The very air seemed different in the house where his love ate and slept and bathed and dressed. He was sure that never before had he seen anything so exquisite as the sofa pillows she had made out of cigarette flags, or the pictures she had burned on wood.

She had a little alcove off the sitting room which was all her own hung with school pennants and drawings of the Charles Dana Gibson variety. She had a cupboard full of bon bon boxes, dance programs, comic postcards inscribed with "Oh, You Girl!" and a whole album of snapshots.

Peter was awed. He had never before seen an alcohol burner nor a chafing dish. He watched the glowing girl as she prepared cocoa and Welsh rarebit, was delighted with every movement she made and every word she spoke.

"I got a raise," Peter said. "I'm a draftsman's assistant now. Mike O'Casey says he might build one of my camp trailers when I get it designed."

"Gee, could I meet Mr. O'Casey sometime?" Maxine asked.

"Well, gosh, Maxine. I dunno. That's pretty hard to arrange."

"Oh, all right, smarty. You think he's too good for a little girl like me."

"But, darling...." He could have bitten his tongue for having said a thing like that. Calling her "darling"! Who did he think he was? She stood perfectly still, waiting.

"You're an awful pretty girl," he said at last. He watched her as she turned to the chafing dish again. Her movements were deft and very feminine.

"I ... I wish you would let me kiss you like you said that night."

"Why not?" said Maxine. She turned up her face for the first kiss Peter had given a girl in his life.

To Peter the world was non-existent for that moment. Maxine broke away to keep the cocoa from boiling over.

Afterwards she turned out the lights and they sat on the sofa looking out into the starlight. They could see across the creek and across mysterious miles of frozen brown marshland beyond the town to where lights twinkled in distant farmhouses. She put his hand down the neck of her dress and he was surprised and almost frightened by the soft delicacy of her breasts.

"Well," said Maxine from the depths of her pillows. "Are you just going to sit there all night?"

She put her arms around him and kissed him again and again. She drew him down toward her and he found himself strangely wishing to be free.

"No, no, Maxine," he said humbly. "I couldn't. Why, Maxine, you're just an angel to me. I never even thought of you like that."

3

Throughout the rest of her days Temperance Crandall measured time as before or after 1913. Often in later Novembers when the leaves hurried across her lawn and the hickory nuts tumbled down from the shagbark hickory she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

It was of little interest to her that Mrs. Sean McGinty died of cancer of the uterus after bearing thirteen children in eighteen years, or that Father O'Malley in laying her away spoke of her as an outstanding example of motherhood. She scarcely bothered to learn the details of the scandalous conduct of the Reverend Charles MacArthur of the Congregational church who had been caught in a compromising situation with his soprano soloist, thus confirming the worst suspicions of the Methodists. And although Gerty MacDougal, 18, entered the bonds of holy matrimony with Cornelius Vandenheim, 82, just in time to inherit a Civil War pension for life, Temperance all but forgot to pass on the information to Sister Dickenson.

For Temperance Crandall was discovering that when tragedy and scandal touch one's own household the salt has lost its savor.

In the first place her mother was definitely sinking. Doctor Whitehead doubted that the old heart could stand the strain of another winter. Secondly Temperance's own Peter Brailsford was being seen so often with that wanton hussy Maxine Larabee that Temperance could have wept. Now, as she waited for Peter to come to breakfast, the harsh whisper of calloused fingers on hard knuckles filled the room.

Peter Brailsford, awaking from a sound sleep, was instantly aware that this was no usual day. He jumped out of bed with a shout, threw his flannel nightgown into a corner, dashed half a pitcher of icy water into the wash bowl, and with chattering teeth sponged his warm skin with a washcloth and rubbed dry with a rough towel. He danced around on his toes throwing a flurry of effective punches into some large, tough adversary, burst into a baritone solo which suddenly went soprano, pulled on long scratchy underwear, corduroy trousers, stiff cowhide boots, and a rough woolen shirt and hurried to the kitchen.

"Um! Pancakes!"

"Put on plenty of butter and mmaple syrup," said Temperance. "I ain't going to let any boy starve under my roof."

It was a bright, cold Saturday morning. Peter had begged the day off. Now he ran shouting with exuberance to join the crowd gathered on the Library steps. Maxine, the English teacher for chaperon, and nearly a dozen others were headed for Lake Koshkonong and a day in the woods.

They piled into an ancient Ford three deep and several on the running boards, chugged and steamed up hills and through valleys bright with maple and sumac until at last they came to Charley's Bluff where they unloaded and built a fire of driftwood on the beach between huge granite boulders. They raced, wrestled and shot at targets with a twenty-two, buried each other in the leaves and shook down hickory nuts.

At noon they gathered about the fire to roast wieners on sticks and to drink black coffee.

All went well until the couples paired off and Maxine decided to sing songs to the accompaniment of Thomas Carlyle's five-string banjo. Who did that half-witted son of a horse-doctor think he was, Peter wondered. They were making outrageous love, Peter thought. Starting off with such comparatively innocuous ditties as "Moonlight Bay" and "You're a Great Big Blue-Eyed Baby," they were soon harmonizing on "Cuddle Up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine," and "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own." Peter began to wonder what sort of a girl Maxine was.

Then he was remorseful.

He was ashamed that he had let himself question Maxine's character. Certainly she had never let another boy kiss her or touch her breasts. She was sitting beside Thomas Carlyle singing songs because he had a banjo; but very soon now she would come over to Peter and they would wander off together. He mustn't let himself be jealous like this. Peter didn't think that he could trust himself if he should find that Maxine was in any way unfaithful. He thought that he would kill her and then himself, and that people would find them locked in each other's arms.

He would write a verse for their common gravestone which would be inscribed beneath twin turtle doves on pure white marble.

He told himself that he was talking nonsense, that no boy should keep his girl from singing songs and flirting a little. But he lay among the leaves, looking up at the sky and brooding over the loss of this precious day which was to mean so much to them. He had intended to ask her to marry him and had thought out just what he was going to say. He had intended to tell her that first love like theirs was always true love, and how their marriage wouldn't turn out like so many marriages. Their life together was going to be different.

He had envisioned the whole scene over and over. They would be cozily sitting in deep leaves in some protected ravine with nothing but the trees and sky to hear what they were saying. He would pour out his heart, and she would listen with rapt attention and turn up her lips for kisses.

He would tell her of his progress at the factory, and of the house they would have on Shannon's hill. They would talk about their children, and about life together after they were married. It was to have been an idyllic day. And now, a gaunt, freckle-faced, banjo-strumming young fool had spoiled it all. Peter felt like going over and pushing the boy in the face and picking up Maxine as he might a child and carrying her away. It would be easy to do. She was as light as a feather and always tripped along as though she were made of thistle down. Her flesh was like thistle down too. It made his head whirr to think of her soft flesh.

Always, always something came between Peter and happiness. He had been brooding and miserable for as long as he could remember, with only now and then a moment of intense happiness to repay him for his misery.

All his life he had worried about good and evil, about God and hell, about his features, his clothes, what people were thinking of him, and whether he would ever amount to anything. And now that he was in love he was experiencing a deeper and more exquisite misery than he could have imagined possible.

Maxine! Maxine!

But here she came at last, all radiant and smiling, her cheeks as red as apples. His heart leapt up in a moment and all his doubts left him. They walked along the beach, skipped stones on the thin ice and on the open stretches of water, dug a bird's nest out of the high, black banks of peat which skirt the beach to the south of Charley's Bluff. They discovered a little stream and followed its course back through the willows to a clearing where they explored a deserted cabin and a barn still filled with timothy and clover. From the wide door of the loft they could see across the lake to Lake House Point and to the Brailsford farm with its bright red barns and to the great cottonwood tree on Cottonwood Hill.

"You see that big tree," Peter said. "Not a man in the country can climb it, not even my father. But I'm going to climb it some day."

"Uh huh," said Maxine comfortably.

"I'm going to do lots of things in my life. Great things. I'm learning a heap about draftsmanship at the Trailer factory. I'm almost finished with my blue prints for that camp trailer. Maybe some day when I get to be famous...."

"Don't talk shop," Maxine said.

"Well, what shall we talk about?"

"Don't let's talk, beautiful boy."

She stopped his mouth with kisses and unashamed gave him his first lesson in love.

As was usual in Brailsford Junction death came before the doctor. Temperance was alone in the house when her mother died. She went up the stairs at six o'clock bringing the old lady a bite of supper and found her breathing heavily and rather chilled. She tried to reach Doctor Whitehead by telephone, but no one answered at the house or the office. She called out the upstairs window to a passing boy and told him to look for the doctor in front of the pool hall, then turned back to the stricken woman who opened her eyes once and smiled at Temperance feebly.

Temperance thought that the poor old thing was humming a hymn but when she leaned closer she realized that it was "Daisy Bell," a great favorite of her mother's. Thinking about it later she realized that her mother had never been what Brailsford Junction usually termed a Christian.

Even before the death rattle began, the thin face turned blue and the small hands clutching the counterpane were as cold as ice.

Temperance did not break down until she had pulled the sheet up over the face of the dead. Then a great flood of loneliness and grief came over her and she ran down the street in her house dress with her hair stringing out behind. Hardly knowing what she was doing she hurried up the stairs leading to the offices of Timothy Halleck and incidentally to the fly-blown waiting-room of Doctor Whitehead.

Brailsford Junction's leading physician was hanging up his prevaricating gilt placard, "Back in Half an Hour."

"Well, well, I was just heading for your home," he said. "I hope it ain't anything serious. How is your mother?"

"As well as could be expected with you on the case," cried Temperance, bitterly. "She died fifteen minutes ago."

"Now ain't that too bad," said Doctor Whitehead, squirting a stream of tobacco juice into a convenient corner. "I suppose you'll want a death certificate, eh?"

Temperance burst in upon Timothy Halleck who during that day had met a delegation of indignant mothers complaining about the oldest son of Crazy Jack Bailey, a young wife whose drunken husband beat her up every Saturday night with the stove poker, and the president of the bank who threatened to cut off his credit if he cancelled his mortgage against the Widow Morrison. For once his patience was tried beyond endurance.

"No, Miss Crandall, this time I will not listen to your gossip. I've heard all that I can stand for one day. Why can't you leave people alone? Let them live their lives and you live yours. For twenty years I've been wanting to tell you that you're a meddlesome, tale-bearing.... There, there now. Don't cry, Temperance. I realize I was a bit thoughtless. Why ... why, what is it?"

"I didn't know who else to tell," Temperance said, hiding her face in her hands. "Mother's dead, Timothy."

Temperance Crandall was to remember to her dying day that Timothy Halleck came around the desk and put his arm across her shoulders and told her that he would take care of the funeral arrangements.