ve weeks, while
business piled up at the First-Class Garage and old Porter Howgill was
asked vainly to do everything.

Then on a fateful night Lyman Teaford assumed a new and disquieting
value in his life. Lyman Teaford, who for a dozen years had gone with
Winona Penniman faithfully if not spectacularly; Lyman Teaford,
dignified and genteel, who belonged to Newbern's better set, had one
night appeared at an affair of the Friday Night Social Club. Perhaps
because he had reached the perilous forties he had suddenly determined
to abandon the safe highway and seek adventure in miry bypaths. Perhaps
he felt that he had austerely played the flute too long. At any rate, he
came and danced with the lower element of Newbern, not oftener with
Pearl than with others that first night. But he came again and danced
much oftener with Pearl. There was no quick, hot alarm in the breast of
Wilbur Cowan. Lyman Teaford was an old man, chiefly notable, in Wilbur's
opinion, for the remarkable fluency of his Adam's apple while--with chin
aloft--he played high notes on his silver flute.

Yet dimly at last he felt discomfort at Lyman's crude persistence with
Pearl. He danced with others now only when Pearl was firm in refusals.
Wilbur to her jested with venomous sarcasm at the expense of Lyman.
Women were difficult to understand, he thought. What could her motive
be?

The drama, Greek in its severity, culminated with a hideous, a sickening
velocity. On a Monday morning, in but moderate torment at Pearl's
inconsistency, Wilbur Cowan sat at the linotype in the _Advance_ office,
swiftly causing type metal to become communicative about the week's
doings in Newbern. He hung a finished sheet of Sam Pickering's pencilled
copy on a hook, and casually surveyed the sheet beneath. It was a social
item, he saw--the notice of a marriage. Then names amazingly leaped from
it to sear his defenseless eyes. Lyman Teaford--Miss Pearl King! He
gasped and looked about him. The familiar routine of the office was
under way. In his little room beyond he could see Sam Pickering
scribbling other items. He constrained himself to read the monstrous
slander before him.

"Lyman N. Teaford, one of our best-known business men, was last evening
united in the bonds of holy wedlock to Miss Pearl King, for some months
employed at the Mansion House. The marriage service was performed by the
Reverend Mallett at the parsonage, and was attended by only a few chosen
friends. The