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“An’ ax him one thing mo’!” It was the voice of her short companion rising above the tumult. “Ax him whut he done wid de funds of de s’ciety he ‘stablished at Little Rock, Arkansaw, all of w’ich he absconded wid dis last spring!”

As though the same set of muscles controlled every neck the heads of all swung about, their eyes following where the accusers pointed, their ears twitching for the expected blast of denial and denunciation which would wither these mad and scandalous detractors in their tracks.

Alas and alackaday! With his splendid figure suddenly all diminished and shrunken, with distress writ large and plain upon his features, the popular idol was step by step flinching backward from the edge of the platform–was step by step inching, edging toward the side door in the right-hand wall.

And in this same instant the stunned assemblage realized that Jeff Poindexter, by nimble maneuvering, had thrust himself between the retreating figure and the exit, and Jeff was crying out: “Not dis way out, Doct’ Duvall. Not dis way! The one you married down below Macon is waitin’ fur you behin’ dis do’!”

The doctor stopped in midflight and swung about and his eye fell upon the right-hand door and he moved a yard or two in that direction; but no more than a yard or two, for again Jeff spoke in warning, halting him short:

“Not dat way neither! The one frum dat other town whar you uster live is waitin’ outside dat do’–wid a pistil! Seems lak you’s entirely s’rounded by wives dis evenin’!”

To the verge of the footlights the beset man darted, and like a desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force strikes the supposedly immovable object of the scientists’ age-old riddle, but on his side was impetus and on hers surprise. She was bowled over flat and her hands, clutching as she went down, closed, but on empty and unresisting air. Literally he hurdled over the stocky form of the little black man behind her, but as the other flitted by him the fists of the stranger knotted firmly into the skirts of its wearer’s long black frock coat and held on. There was a rending, tearing sound and as the back breadth of the garment ripped bodily away from the waistband there flew forth from the capsized tail pockets a veritable cloudburst of currency–floating, fluttering green and yellow bills and with them pattering showers of dollars and halves and dimes and quarters and nickels.

That canny instinct which had led the fugitive apostle of the uplift to hide the collected funds of the league upon his person rather than trust to banks and strong boxes was to prove his ruination financially but his salvation physically. While those who had believed in him, now forgetting all else, scrambled for the scattered money–their money–he fled out of the unguarded door and was instantly gone into the shielding night–a sorry shape in a bob-tailed garment.

At a somewhat later hour Judge Priest in his living room was receiving from Jefferson Poindexter a much lengthier and more elaborated account of the main occurrences of the evening at Hillman’s Hall than has here been presented. Speaking as he did in the dual role of spectator and of an actuating force in the events of that crowded and exciting night, Jeff spared no details. He had come to the big scene of his narrative when his master interrupted him:

“Hold on a minute, Jeff! I don’t know ez I get the straight of it all yit. I rather gathered frum whut you told me yesterday when you landed back home and made your report that you’d only been able to dig up one certain-sure wife of this feller’s–the one that came along with you and that little Arkansaw darky. You didn’t say anything then about bein’ able to prove he wuz a bigamist.”

“Huh, jedge, I didn’t have to prove it! Dat man wuz more’n jes’ a plain bigamist. He sho’ wuz a trigamist, an’ ef the full truth wuz knowed I ‘spects he wuz a quadrupler at the very least. He proved it hisself–way he act’ w’en the big ‘splosion come.”

“But the two women you told him were waitin’ behind those side doors for him–how about them?”

“Law, jedge, dey wuzn’t dere–neither one of ’em wuzn’t. Jes’ lak I told you yistiddy, I couldn’t find only jest one woman dat nigger’d married an’ run off frum, an’ her I fetched ‘long wid me. But lak I also told you, I got kind of traces of one dat uster live below Macon but w’ich is now vanished, an’ ever’whar else I went whar he’d lived befo’ he come yere de signs wuz manifold dat he wuz a natchel-born marryin’ fool, jes’ lak I ‘spicioned fust time ever I see him. So w’en he started fur dat fust do’ I taken a chancet on him an’ w’en I seen how he cringed an’ ducked back I taken another chancet on him, an’ the subsequent evidences offers testimony dat both times I reckined right. Jedge, the late Doct’ Duvall muster married some powerful rough-actin’ gals in his time ef he thought the Mobile one wuz the gentlest out of three. Well, anyway, suh, the ravelin’ wolf is gone frum us, an’ fur one I ain’t ‘spectin’ him back never no mo’. An’ I reckin dat’s the main pint wid you an’ me both.”

“The ravelin’ whut?”

“Dat’s whut Aunt Dilsey called him oncet, speechifyin’ to me ’bout him–the ravelin’ wolf. Only he suttinly did look he wuz comin’ unraveled mighty fast the last I seen of him.”