The thought of poison was in the mind of each.
It was under these trying circumstances that Sanford began to
crawl about, a week or ten days after his sickness. It was really the
most terrible punishment for him. Before, everybody used to sing
out, "Hello, Jim!"- or "Mornin', banker," or some other jovial,
heartwarming salutation. Now, as he went down the street, the
groups of men smoking on the sunny side of the stores ignored
him, or looked at him with scornfull eyes.
Nobody said, "Hello, Jim!"-not even McPhail or Vance. They
nodded merely, and went on with their smoking. The children
followed him and stared at him without compassion. They had
heard him called a scoundrel and a thief too often at home to feel
any pity for his pale face.
After his first trip down the street, bright with the December
sunshine, he came home in a bitter, weak mood, smarting, aching
with a poignant self-pity over the treatment he had received from
his old cronies.
"It's all your fault," he burst out to his wife. "If you'd only let me go
away and look up another place, I wouldn't have to put up with all
these sneers and insults."
"What sneers and insults?" she asked, coming over to him.
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