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the day of his marriage, twenty years before. Instead he had taken quietly to the use of laudanum and other sedatives, thus escaping by way of the back door a hard and intensely religious world entirely dominated by his wife.

When Mrs. Biggers got the news over the wire she acted at once. She seized her hat off the bed, clapped it on her gray hair in any fashion, and hurried out into the street, her thin lips pressed together in determination. She set out walking in the direction of the home of her brother, Mr. Perry Northcutt, the banker.

When Mrs. Biggers reached this residence, she entered without the formality of a ring, hastened down a hallway, and then with the briefest rap entered the combined sitting room and bedroom of her brother and his wife.

When Mrs. Biggers entered she found the banker, his fat, rather sullen-looking wife, and their three children engaged in family prayers. At this sight Mrs. Biggers was somewhat soothed, a certain sweet satisfaction welled up in her bosom, for she was eleven years older than the banker and, during his childhood, had occupied toward him a maternal relation. Now to see her brother kneeling in prayer reminded her of their father who had been dead these many years, and she thought, "If there ever was a real Christian, brother Perry is one."

As Mr. Northcutt finished his devotions, his sister broke out abruptly, "Perry, did you know that man Ditmas is getting up a baseball game for this afternoon?"

The banker arose deliberately from his kneeling.

"I had heard it."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"It may not be true."

"You know it's so, ever'thing bad and wicked is so."

Mr. Northcutt hesitated, then said, "I don't know that I am going to do anything about it, Roxie."

This was a literal truth. He did not know what he was going to do. He had been worrying over the question all that forenoon, and in his prayer he had been silently asking