By the arrival of the third day the town had talked the matter over. Men had carried home news of the attachment upon the Spellman store. Women in passing had stopped and read it with horrified eyes. It was the talk of the streets and through the homes, that, but for the banker’s decency in the matter, the same attachment would now be decorating the Spellman front door. No one ever had thought of or voiced such a thing before. Mahlon Spellman’s dealings in real estate, the outward and visible sign of prosperity displayed by the Spellman home, the wife and the daughter, the constant attitude of Mahlon himself, had thoroughly convinced the citizens of his town that he was quite as prosperous as he desired every one to think that he was. Now it required the three days, and in some instances, longer, for people to adjust themselves to the idea that what they had thought was a pillar of stone was really one of papiermâché—a thing that could be picked up, crushed, and broken within an hour. Strictly in accordance with the old manifestations of human nature, the snake tongues of envy and jealousy and greed broke loose. The unconscious Mahlon, lying in inarticulate dignity, became a target. First people exclaimed in horror. They shed tears of sympathy. Very speedily they reached the point where they dissected Mahlon as an expert surgeon would use a knife. They laughed at his weaknesses. They felt for their ties; they flecked their sleeves; they looked at their shoes with exaggerated care. Women who only a week before had supposed themselves to be the dearest friends of Elizabeth Spellman, suddenly discovered that she had been too proud, and that “pride always goes before a fall.” Like a pack of hungry wolves they tore and worried every manifest characteristic of the dainty little woman who lay unconscious on the borderland. They blamed her every extravagance in the furnishing of her home. They pointed out the number of mantles, of shawls, and new gowns, of shoes and of bonnets, that she wore during a year. They sneered at the weakness which had made her spend her time and strength upon dressing and rearing Mahala as she had done. The air was thick with cold-blooded old maxims. Upon each lip there was heard the terse, sneering comment: “The higher you climb, the harder you fall.” Through curiosity they rallied around Mahala with some show of sympathy until her father had been borne to the church, down the aisle of which he had loved to walk in his pride, and then to his final resting place in the Ashwater cemetery out on the River Road, where the birds sang among the maples and the river, in a monotone, accompanied them all day; where in spring the cradle swung through the golden wheat and in fall the lowing of cattle was heard on the hills.