satisfied then, buy my clothes, my wedding ring, the only things your
husband hasn't stolen."

"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Tucker coldly, turning towards the
door. But with a flying leap across the counter her relentless adversary
stood between her and retreat.

"You don't understand! Perhaps you don't understand that your husband
not only stole the hard labor of these men, but even the little money
they brought here and trusted to his thieving hands. Perhaps you don't
know that he stole my husband's hard earnings, mortgaged these very
goods you want to buy, and that he is to-day a convicted thief, a
forger, and a runaway coward. Perhaps, if you can't understand ME,
you can read the newspaper. Look!" She exultingly opened the paper the
sheriff had been reading aloud, and pointed to the displayed headlines.
"Look! there are the very words, 'Forgery, Swindling, Embezzlement!' Do
you see? And perhaps you can't understand this. Look! 'Shameful Flight.
Abandons his Wife. Runs off with a Notorious--'"

"Easy, old gal, easy now. D--n it! Will you dry up? I say. STOP!"

It was too late!

The sheriff had dashed the paper from the woman's hand, but not until
Mrs. Tucker had read a single line, a line such as she had sometimes
turned from with weary scorn in her careless perusal of the daily
shameful chronicle of domestic infelicity. Then she had coldly wondered
if there could be any such men and women; and now! The crowd fell back
before her; even the virago was silenced as she looked at her face.
The humorist's face was as white, but not as immobile, as he gasped,