Goaded by inquiries, Mr. Arp, who had little desire to recall such waste of silver, admitted more than he had intended:  that he had purchased a ticket and gone in to see the Spotted Wild Boy, halting in his description of this marvel with the unsatisfactory and acrid statement that the Wild Boy was “simply Spotted,”—­and the stung query, “I suppose you know what a spot is, Squire?” When he came out of the tent he had narrowly examined the ticket-seller,—­who seemed unaware of his scrutiny, and, when not engaged with his tickets, applied himself to a dirty law-looking book.  It was Joseph Louden, reasserted Eskew, a little taller, a little paler, incredibly shabby and miraculously thin.  If there were any doubt left, his forehead was somewhat disfigured by the scar of an old wound—­such as might have been caused by a blunt instrument in the nature of a poker.

“What’s the matter with you?” Mr. Arp whirled upon Uncle Joe Davey, who was enjoying himself by repeating at intervals the unreasonable words, “Couldn’t of be’n Joe,” without any explanation.  “Why couldn’t it?” shouted Eskew.  “It was!  Do you think my eyes are as fur gone as yours?  I saw him, I tell you!  The same ornery Joe Louden, run away and sellin’ tickets for a side-show.  He wasn’t even the boss of it; the manager was about the meanest-lookin’ human I ever saw —­and most humans look mighty mean, accordin’ to my way of thinkin’!  Riffraff of the riffraff are his friends now, same as they were here.  Weeds! and he’s a weed, always was and always will be!  Him and his kind ain’t any more than jimpsons; overrun everything if you give ’em a chance.  Devil-flowers!  They have to be hoed out and scattered—­even then, like as not, they’ll come back next year and ruin your plantin’ once more.  That boy Joe ’ll turn up here again some day; you’ll see if he don’t.  He’s a seed of trouble and iniquity, and anything of that kind is sure to come back to Canaan!”

Mr. Arp stuck to his prediction for several months; then he began to waver and evade.  By the end of the second year following its first utterance, he had formed the habit of denying that he had ever made it at all, and, finally having come to believe with all his heart that the prophecy had been deliberately foisted upon him and put in his mouth by Squire Buckalew, became so sore upon the subject that even the hardiest dared not refer to it in his presence.

Eskew’s story of the ticket-seller was the only news of Joe Louden that came to Canaan during seven years.  Another citizen of the town encountered the wanderer, however, but under circumstances so susceptible to misconception that, in a moment of illumination, he decided to let the matter rest in a golden silence.  This was Mr. Bantry.