expression was encouraging. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and
there may have been in them, also, the mingled beginnings of admiration
and self-reproach. Penrod, warming to his work, felt safer every moment.

"And so," he continued, "I had to sit up with Aunt Clara. She had some
pretty big bruises, too, and I had to----"

"But why didn't they send for a doctor?" However, this question was only
a flicker of dying incredulity.

"Oh, they didn't want any DOCTOR," exclaimed the inspired realist
promptly. "They don't want anybody to HEAR about it because Uncle John
might reform--and then where'd he be if everybody knew he'd been a
drunkard and whipped his wife and baby daughter?"

"Oh!" said Miss Spence.

"You see, he used to be upright as anybody," he went on explanatively.
"It all begun----"

"Began, Penrod."

"Yes'm. It all commenced from the first day he let those travelling men
coax him into the saloon." Penrod narrated the downfall of his Uncle
John at length. In detail he was nothing short of plethoric; and
incident followed incident, sketched with such vividness, such abundance
of colour, and such verisimilitude to a drunkard's life as a drunkard's
life should be, that had Miss Spence possessed the rather chilling
attributes of William J. Burns himself, the last trace of skepticism
must have vanished from her mind. Besides, there are two things that