JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,

Specialist in Chronic Diseases and General Practitioner.




CHAPTER XXVI

A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST

All day John Brown, ex-clergyman and quack-doctor, harangued the people
of Chaudiere from his gaily-painted wagon. He had the perfect gift of
the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier. Inclined to the
picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had
been the due fruit of habit and education. As a dabbler in mines he had
been out of his element. He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic
had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and
because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had
ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele. Since Charley's
death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful
day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made.
From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's
death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in
acquittal, and the subsequent discovery of the theft of the widows' and
orphans' trust-moneys.

On this St. Jean Baptiste's day he was thinking of anything and
everything else but Charley Steele. Nothing could have been a better