Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town Stephen Leacock (ready to read books TXT) đ
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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That afternoon the Mariposa court sat in enquiryâ âtechnically it was summoned in inquest on the dead robberâ âthough they hadnât found the bodyâ âand it was wonderful to see them lining up the witnesses and holding cross-examinations. There is something in the cross-examination of great criminal lawyers like Nivens, of Mariposa, and in the counter examinations of presiding judges like Pepperleigh that thrills you to the core with the astuteness of it.
They had Henry Mullins, the manager, on the stand for an hour and a half, and the excitement was so breathless that you could have heard a pin drop. Nivens took him on first.
âWhat is your name?â he said.
âHenry August Mullins.â
âWhat position do you hold?â
âI am manager of the Exchange Bank.â
âWhen were you born?â
âDecember 30, 1869.â
After that, Nivens stood looking quietly at Mullins. You could feel that he was thinking pretty deeply before he shot the next question at him.
âWhere did you go to school?â
Mullins answered straight off: âThe high school down home,â and Nivens thought again for a while and then asked:
âHow many boys were at the school?â
âAbout sixty.â
âHow many masters?â
âAbout three.â
After that Nivens paused a long while and seemed to be digesting the evidence, but at last an idea seemed to strike him and he said:
âI understand you were not on the bank premises last night. Where were you?â
âDown the lake duck shooting.â
You should have seen the excitement in the court when Mullins said this. The judge leaned forward in his chair and broke in at once.
âDid you get any, Harry?â he asked.
âYes,â Mullins said, âabout six.â
âWhere did you get them? What? In the wild rice marsh past the river? You donât say so! Did you get them on the sit or how?â
All of these questions were fired off at the witness from the court in a single breath. In fact, it was the knowledge that the first ducks of the season had been seen in the Ossawippi marsh that led to the termination of the proceedings before the afternoon was a quarter over. Mullins and George Duff and half the witnesses were off with shotguns as soon as the court was cleared.
I may as well state at once that the full story of the robbery of the bank of Mariposa never came to the light. A number of arrestsâ âmostly of vagrants and suspicious charactersâ âwere made, but the guilt of the robbery was never brought home to them. One man was arrested twenty miles away, at the other end of Missinaba county, who not only corresponded exactly with the description of the robber, but, in addition to this, had a wooden leg. Vagrants with one leg are always regarded with suspicion in places like Mariposa, and whenever a robbery or a murder happens they are arrested in batches.
It was never even known just how much money was stolen from the bank. Some people said ten thousand dollars, others more. The bank, no doubt for business motives, claimed that the contents of the safe were intact and that the robber had been foiled in his design.
But none of this matters to the exaltation of Mr. Pupkin. Good fortune, like bad, never comes in small instalments. On that wonderful day, every good thing happened to Peter Pupkin at once. The morning saw him a hero. At the sitting of the court, the judge publicly told him that his conduct was fit to rank among the annals of the pioneers of Tecumseh Township, and asked him to his house for supper. At five oâclock he received the telegram of promotion from the head office that raised his salary to a thousand dollars, and made him not only a hero but a marriageable man. At six oâclock he started up to the judgeâs house with his resolution nerved to the most momentous step of his life.
His mind was made up.
He would do a thing seldom if ever done in Mariposa. He would propose to Zena Pepperleigh. In Mariposa this kind of step, I say, is seldom taken. The course of love runs on and on through all its stages of tennis playing and dancing and sleigh riding, till by sheer notoriety of circumstance an understanding is reached. To propose straight out would be thought priggish and affected and is supposed to belong only to people in books.
But Pupkin felt that what ordinary people dare not do, heroes are allowed to attempt. He would propose to Zena, and more than that, he would tell her in a straight, manly way that he was rich and take the consequences.
And he did it.
That night on the piazza, where the hammock hangs in the shadow of the Virginia creeper, he did it. By sheer good luck the judge had gone indoors to the library, and by a piece of rare good fortune Mrs. Pepperleigh had gone indoors to the sewing room, and by a happy trick of coincidence the servant was out and the dog was tied upâ âin fact, no such chain of circumstances was ever offered in favour of mortal man before.
What Zena saidâ âbeyond saying yesâ âI do not know. I am sure that when Pupkin told her of the money, she bore up as bravely as so fine a girl as Zena would, and when he spoke of diamonds she said she would wear them for his sake.
They were saying these things and other thingsâ âever so many other thingsâ âwhen there was such a roar and a clatter up Oneida Street as you never heard, and there came bounding up to the house one of the most marvellous Limousine touring cars that ever drew up at the home of a judge on a modest salary of three thousand dollars. When it stopped there sprang from it an excited man in a long sealskin coatâ âworn not for the luxury of it at all but from the sheer chilliness of the autumn evening. And it was, as of course you know, Pupkinâs father. He
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