The scene somehow reminded Barstow of one of Poe's landscapes. It was the corpse of a home. Eventually he noticed a tall woman in black, seated on a bench and gazing down the terraces across the dead lake. Barstow was tempted to ask her whose place this had been and what its history was, but her mien and her crepe daunted him. He made his way out of the region, looking back as he went. When he approached the most neighboring house a grocery-wagon came flying down the road. Before it stopped the slanted driver was off the seat and half-way across the yard. In a moment he was back again. Barstow called out: "Whose place is that?" "Shelby's." "Did he move away?" But the horse was already in motion, and the youth had darted after, leaping to the side of the seat and calling back something which Barstow could not hear. Shelby, who had given the town everything he could, had even endowed it with a ruins. When Barstow had reached the hotel again he went in to his supper. A head waitress, chewing gum, took him to a table where a wildly coiffed damsel brought him a bewildering array of most undesirable foods in a flotilla of small dishes. After supper Barstow, following the suit of the other guests, took a chair on the sidewalk, for a little breeze loafed along the hot street. Barstow's name had been seen upon the hotel register and the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club waited upon him in an august body. Mr. Pettibone introduced himself and the others. They took chairs and hitched them close to Barstow, while they poured out in alternate strains the advantages of Wakefield. Barstow listened politely, but the empty factory and the dismantled home of Shelby haunted him and made a dismal background to their advertisements. It was of the factory that he spoke first: "The building you wrote me about and offered me rent-free looks a little small and out of date for our plant. I saw Shelby's factory empty. Could I rent that at a reasonable figure, do you suppose?" The committee leaped at the idea with enthusiasm. Spate laughed through his beard: "Lord, I reckon the company would rent it to you for almost the price of the taxes." Then he realized that this was saying just a trifle too much. They began to crawfish their way out. But Barstow said, with unconviction: "There's only one thing that worries me. Why did Shelby close up his Paradise Powder factory and move away?" Pettibone urged the reason hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him. They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down the factory and then shut down on him, too." "So he gave up his house and moved away?" said Barstow. "He gave up his house because he couldn't keep it up," said Amasa Harbury. "Taxes were pretty steep and nobody would rent it, of course. It don't belong in a town like Wakefield. Neither did Shelby." "So he moved away?"