It is worthy of mention that there was no Main Street in Rumley. In rechristening the principal thoroughfare, the board of trustees deliberately violated all traditions by giving it the name of Clay Street, not in honor of the celebrated Henry Clay but because for at least two generations it had been known as the clay road on account of the natural color and character of its soil. This reduced confusion among the older and more settled inhabitants to a minimum; they very cheerfully consented to spell clay with a capital C and declared it wasn’t half as much trouble as they thought it would be to remember to say Street instead of Road. But even so, it was still a clay road—and in rainy weather a very _bad_ clay road. Mary Baxter died of typhoid fever when young Oliver was nearing seven. Her untimely demise revived the half-forgotten prophecy of the gypsy fortune-teller. People looked severely at each other and, in hushed tones, discussed the inexorable ways of fate. Those acquainted with the story of that October night told it to newcomers in Rumley; even the doubters and scoffers were impressed. It was the first “sign” that young Oliver’s fortune was coming true. Somehow people were kinder and gentler to him after his mother died. As for Oliver the elder, there was a strange—one might almost believe, triumphant—expression in his stricken, anxious eyes, as if back of them in his mind he was crying: “Now will you laugh at me for believing what that woman said?” Of an entirely different nature was the agitation created by the unrighteous behavior of the preacher’s wife. It all came like a bolt out of the blue. No one ever suspected that she had gone away to stay. Why, half the women in town, on learning that she was going to Chicago for a brief visit with her folks, went around to the parsonage to kiss her good-by and to wish her a very pleasant time. Some of them accompanied her to the railway depot and kissed her again, while two or three young men almost came to blows over who should carry her suitcase into the day coach and see that she was comfortably seated. They were all members of Mr. Sage’s church. Josephine had a remarkable faculty for drawing young men into the fold. Several who had been more or less criticized for their loose ways suddenly got religion and went to church twice every Sabbath and to prayer meeting on Wednesday nights with unbelievable perseverance until they found out that it wasn’t doing them the least bit of good. Excoriation and a stream of “I told you so’s” were bestowed upon the pretty young wife and mother when it became known that she was not coming back. The Presbyterians made a great show of pitying their pastor, and the Methodists made an even greater show of pitying the Presbyterians—which, when all is said and done, was the thing that made Josephine’s act an absolutely unpardonable one.