he was satisfied!

And so, eventually, I am forced to believe, were the hens. In the
earlier days of the scandal there was much clitter-clatter of having the
law on him, serving papers, and the like; but, as hen cackle sometimes
will, it came to precisely naught. Nor am I certain that, as the years
passed, the neighborhood did not grow a little proud of its one crimson
patch of wickedness; I am reasonably certain, indeed, that more than one
drab life took on a little borrowed flush of excitement from its
proximity.

Of course no decent, God-fearing woman would ever greet either Bob or
Pearl; but every time one passed either of them without a nod or a
"How's things to-day?" it gave one something to talk about, at home, or
over any amicable fence.

As for the men, they too were forbidden to speak; but men, most of them,
are unruly creatures if at large. You can't trust them safely five
minutes beyond the sound of your voice.

There was even one man, old Heinze, proprietor of the Birch Street
grocery store, who now and then cautiously put forth a revolutionary
sentiment.

"Dey lifs alvays togedder--like man unt vife--nod? Vere iss der
diffurunz, Mrs. Shay?"

"Shame on you for _them_ words, Mr. Heinze!"

"_Aber_"--with a slow, wide smile--"vere iss der diffurunz, Mrs. Shay? I
leaf id to you?"

That Pearl and Bob lived always together cannot be denied, and perhaps
they also lived as some men and their lawful wives are accustomed to
live--off toward the wrong end of city streets; and occasionally, no
doubt, toward the right end of them as well. Midweek, things wore along
dully enough, but over Sunday came drink and ructions. Susan says she
has never been able to understand why Sunday happens to be called a day
of rest. The day of arrest, she was once guilty of naming it.

Bob's neighbors, I fear, were not half so scandalized by his week-end
drunkenness as by what Mrs. Perkins--three doors nearer the right end of
Birch Street--invariably called his "brazen immorality." Intoxication
was not a rare vice in that miscellaneous block or two of factory
operatives. Nor can it be said that immorality, in the sense of Mrs.
Perkins, was so much rare as it was nervously concealed. The unique
quality of Bob's sin lay in its brazen element; that was what stamped
him peculiarly as a social outlaw.

Bob accepted this position, if sober, with a grim disregard. He had a
bitter, lowering nature at best, and when not profane was tac