The Ballad of the Sad Café-3

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    They drank until it ast midnight, and the moon was clouded over so that the night was cold and dark. The hunchback still sat otom steps, bent over miserably with his forehead resting on his knee. Miss Amelia stood with her hands in her pockets, one foot resting on the sed step of the stairs. She had been silent for a long time. Her face had the expression often seen in slightly cross-eyed persons who are thinking deeply, a look that appears to be both very wise and very crazy. At last she said: "I dont know your name."

    "Im Lymon Willis," said the hunchback.

    "Well, e on in," she said. "Some supper was left iove and you  eat."

    Only a few times in her life had Miss Amelia invited ao eat with her, unless she were planning to trick them in some way, or make money out of them. So the men on the porch felt there was something wrong. Later, they said among themselves that she must have been drinking ba the s the better part of the afternoon. At any rate she left the porch, and Stumpy MacPhail and the twi on off home. She bolted the front door and looked all around to see that her goods were in order. Then she went to the kit, which was at the back of the store. The hunchback followed her, dragging his suitcase, sniffing and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his dirty coat.

    "Sit down," said Miss Amelia. "Ill just warm up whats here."

    It was a good meal they had together on that night. Miss Amelia was rid she did ne herself food. There was fried chi (the breast of which the hunchback took on his own plate), mashedbbr></abbr> rootabeggars, creens, and hot, pale golden, sweet potatoes. Miss Amelia ate slowly and with the relish of a farm hand. She sat with both elbows oable, bent over the plate, her knees spread wide apart and her feet braced on the rungs of the chair. As for the hunchback, he gulped down his supper as though he had not smelled food in months. During the meal oear crept down his dingy cheek -- but it was just a little leftover tear a nothing at all. The lamp oable was well-trimmed, burning blue at the edges of the wick, and casting a cheerful light i. When Miss Amelia had eaten her supper she wiped her plate carefully with a slice of light bread, and then poured her own clear, sweet syrup over the bread. The hunchback did likewise -- except that he was more finicky and asked for a new plate. Having finished, Miss Amelia tilted back her chair, tightened her fist, ahe hard, supple muscles of her right arm beh the , blue cloth of her shirtsleeves -- an unscious habit with her, at the close of a meal. Theook the lamp from the table and jerked her head toward the staircase as an invitation for the hunchback to follow after her.

    Above the store there were the three rooms where Miss Amelia had lived during all her life -- two bedrooms with a large parlor iween. Few people had evehese rooms, but it was generally known that they were well-f９9liｂ?urnished aremely . And now Miss Amelia was taking up with her a dirty little hunchbacked stranger, e from God knows where. Miss Amelia walked slowly, two steps at a time, holding the lamp high. The hunchback hovered so close behihat the swinging light made oaircase wall one great, twisted shadow of the two of them. Soon the premises above the store were dark as the rest of the town.

    The  m was serene, with a sunrise of urple mixed with rose. In the fields around the town the furrows were newly plo<mark>.9９lｉｂ.</mark>wed, and very early the tenants were at work setting out the young, deep green tobacco plants. The wild crows flew down close to the fields, making swift blue shadows on the earth. In town the people set out early with their dinner pails, and the windows of the mill were blinding gold in the sun. The air was fresh and the peach trees light as March clouds with their blossoms.

    Miss Amelia came down at about dawn, as usual. She washed her head at the pump and very shortly set about her business. Later in the m she saddled her mule ao see about her property, planted with cotton, up he Forks Falls Road. By noon, of course, everybody had heard about the hunchback who had e to the store in the middle of the night. But no one as yet had seen him. The day soon grew hot and the sky was a rich, midday blue. Still no one had laid an eye on this strange guest. A few people remembered t<s>藏书网</s>hat Miss Amelias mother had had a half-sister -- but there was some difference of opinion as to whether she had died or had run off with a tobaccer. As for the hunchbacks claim, everyohought it was a trumped-up business. And the town, knowing Miss Amelia, decided that surely she had put him out of the house after feeding him. But toward evening, when the sky had whitened, and the shift was done, a woman claimed to have seen a crooked face at the window of one of the rooms up over the store. Miss Amelia herself said nothing. She clerked iore for a while, argued for an hour with a farmer over a plow shaft, mended some chi wire, locked up near sundown, ao her rooms. The town was left puzzled and talkative.

    The  day Miss Amelia did not opeore, but stayed locked up inside her premises and saw no one. Now this was the day that the rumor started -- the rumor so terrible that the town and all the try about were stunned by it The rumor was started by a weaver called Merlie Ryan. He is a man of not much at -- sallow, shambling, and with h in his head. He has the three-day malaria, which means that every third day the fever es on him. So on two days he is dull and cross, but ohird day he livens up and sometimes has an idea or two, most of which are foolish. It was while Merlie Ryan was in his fever that he turned suddenly and said:

    &quot;I know what Miss Amelia done. She murdered that man for something in that suitcase.&quot;

    He said this in a calm voice, as a statement of fact. And within an hour the news had swept through the town. It was a fierd sickly tale the town built up that day. In it were all the things which cause the heart to shiver -- a hunchback, a midnight burial in the s, the dragging of Miss Amelia through the streets of the town on the way to prison, the squabbles over what would happen to her property -- all told in hushed voices aed with some fresh and weird detail. It rained and women fot t in the washing from the lines. One or two mortals, who were io Miss Amelia, even put on Sunday clothes as though it were a holiday. People clustered together on the main street, talking and watg the store.

    It would be uo say that all the town took part in this evil festival. There were a few sensible men who reasohat Miss Amelia, being rich, would not go out of her way to murder a vagabond for a few trifles of junk. Iown there were even three good people, and they did not want this crime, not even for the sake of the i and the great otion it would entail; it gave them no pleasure to think of Miss Amelia holding to the bars of the peiary and bein<s>.</s>g electrocuted in Atlanta. These good people judged Miss Amelia in a different way from what the others judged her. When a person is as trary in every single respect as she was and when the sins of a person have amouo such a point that they  hardly be remembered all at once -- then this person plainly requires a special judgment. They remembered that Miss Amelia had been born dark and somewhat queer of face, raised motherless by her father who was a solitary man, that early in youth she had grown to be six feet two iall whi itself is not natural for a woman, and that her ways and habits of life were too peculiar ever to reason about. Above all, they remembered her puzzling marriage, which was the most unreasonable sdal ever to happen in this town.

    So these good people felt toward her somethio pity. And when she was out on her wild business, such as rushing in a house t forth a sewing mae in payment for a debt, etting herself worked up over some matter ing the law -- they had toward her a feeling which was a mixture of exasperation, a ridiculous little iickle, and a deep, unnamable sadness. But enough of the good people, for there were only three of them; the rest of the town was making a holiday of this fancied crime the whole of the afternoon.

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