he list."

"I do not see that the list concerns you," the mayor said. "Why do you
wish to see it?"

"I wish to see it, Richard, because I suspect that the name of my Cousin
Jack Stilwell is upon it."

"Oh, mother!" cried Alice, who had been listening in surprise to the
conversation, suddenly starting to her feet; "you don't mean that they
have pressed Jack to be a soldier."

"Leave the room, Alice," her father said angrily. "This is no concern of
a child like you." When the door closed behind the girl he said to his
wife:

"Naturally his name is in the list. I selected fifty of the most
worthless fellows in Southampton, and his name was the first which
occurred to me. What then?"

"Then I tell you, Richard," Dame Anthony said, rising, "that you are a
wretch, a mean, cowardly, cruel wretch. You have vented your spite upon
Jack, whom I love as if he were my own son, because he would not put
up with the tyranny of your foreman and yourself. You may be Mayor of
Southampton, you may be a great man in your own way, but I call you a
mean, pitiful fellow. I won't stay in the house with you an hour longer.
The wagon for Basingstoke comes past at three o'clock, and I shall go
and stay with my father and mother there, and take Alice with me."

"I forbid you to do anything of the sort," the mayor said pompously.

"You forbid!" Dame Anthony cried. "What do I care for your forbidding?
If you say a word I will go down the town and join those who pelted you
with mud last night. A nice spectacle it would be for the worthy Mayor
of Southampton to be pelted in the street by a lot of women led by his
own wife. You know me, Richard. You know when I say I will do a thing I
will do it."

"I will lock you up in your own room, woman."

"You won't," Dame Anthony said scornfully. "I would scream out of the
window till I brought the whole town round. No, Mr. Mayor. You have had
your own way, and I am going to have mine. Go and tell the town if you
like that your wife has left you because you kidnapped her cousin, the
boy she loved. You tell your story and I will tell mine. Why, the women
in the town would hoot you, and you wouldn't dare show your face in the
streets. You insist, indeed! Why, you miserable little man, my fingers
are tingling now. Say another word to me and I will box your ears till
you won't know whether you are standing on your head or your heels."

The mayor was a small man, while Dame Anthony, although not above the