The Ballad of the Sad Café-1

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    THE TOWN itself is dreary; not much is there except the ill, the two-room houses where the workers live, a few peach trees, a church with two colored windows, and a miserable main street only a hundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the near-by farms e in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off aranged from all other places in the world. The rain stop is Society City, and the Greyhound and White Bus Lines use the Forks Falls Road which is three miles away. The winters here are short and raw, the summers white with glare and fiery hot.

    If you walk along the main street on an August afternoon there is nothing whatsoever to do. The largest building, in the very ter of the town, is boarded up pletely and leans so far to the right that it seems bound to collapse at any mihe house is very old. There is about it a curious, cracked look that is very puzzling until you suddenly realize that at oime, and long ago, the right side of the front porch had been painted, and part of the wall -- but the painting was left unfinished and one portion of the house is darker and dihaher. The building looks pletely deserted. heless, on the sed floor there is one window which is not boarded; sometimes ie afternoohe heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and a face will look down oown. It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams -- sexless and white, with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seembbr>?9９lｉｂ.</abbr> to be exging with each other one long a gaze of grief. The face lingers at the window for an hour or so, then the shutters are dosed once more, and as likely as not there will not be another soul to be seen along the main street. These August afternoons -- when your shift is fihere is absolutely nothing to do; you might as well walk down to the Forks Falls Road and listen to the  gang.

    However, here in this very town there was once a café. And this old boarded-up house was unlike any other plaany miles around. There were tables with cloths and paper napkins, colored streamer<s></s>s from the electris, great gatherings on Saturday nights. The owner of the place was Miss Amelia Evans. But the person most responsible for the success and gaiety of the place was a hunchback called Cousin Lymon. Oher person had a part iory of this café -- he was the former husband of Miss Amelia, a terrible character who returo the town after a long term in the peiary, caused ruin, and the on his way again. The café has long since been closed, but it is still remembered.

    The place was not always a café. Miss Amelia ied the building from her father, and it was a store that carried mostly feed, guano, and staples such as meal and snuff. Miss Amelia was rich. In addition to the store she operated a still three miles ba the s, and ran out the best liquor in the ty. She was a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from the forehead, and there was about her sunburned face a tense, haggard quality. She might have been a handsome woman if, even then, she was not slightly cross-eyed. There were those who would have courted her, but Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men and was a solitary person. Her marriage had been unlike any other marriage ever tracted in this ty -- it was a strange and dangerous marriage, lasting only for ten days, that left the whole town w and shocked. Except for this queer marriage, Miss Amelia had lived her life alone. Often she spent whole nights ba her shed in the s, dressed in overalls and gum boots, silently guarding the low fire of the still.

    With all things which could be made by the hands Miss Amelia prospered. She sold chitterlins and sausage iown near-by. On fiumn days, she ground shum, and the syrup from her vats was dark golden and delicately flavored. She built the brick privy behiore in only two weeks and was skilled in carpentering. It was only with people that Miss Amelia was not at ease. People, uhey are nilly-willy or very sick, ot be taken into the hands and ged ht to something more worthwhile and profitable. So that the only use that Miss Amelia had for other people was to make money out of them. And in this she succeeded. Mes on crops and property, a sawmill, money in the bank -- she was the richest woman for miles around. She would have been rich as a gressman if it were not for her one great failing, and that was her passion for lawsuits and the courts. She would involve herself in long and bitter litigation over just a trifle. It was said that if Miss Amelia so muced, and a dark lock of hair fell down on her forehead. While they were waiting there, a dog from one of the houses down the road began a wild, hoarse howl that tinued until a voice called out and hushed him. It was not until the figure was quite close, within the range of the yellow light from the porch, that they saw dearly what had e.

    The man was a stranger, and it is rare that a stranger ehe town on foot at that hour. Besides, the man was a hunchback. He was scarcely more than four feet tall and he wore a ragged, dusty coat that reached only to his knees. His crooked little legs seemed too thin to carry the weight of his great ed chest and the hump that sat on his shoulders. He had a very large head, with deep-set blue eyes and a sharp little mouth. His face was both soft and sassy -- at the moment his pale skin was yellowed by dust and there were lavendar shadows beh his eyes. He carried a lopsided old suitcase which was tied with a rope.

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