f gin; and they went off together, leaving
me alone.

When their resounding footsteps had died away down the stairs, I picked
up the lamp and walked about, examining the shadowy corners of the room,
peering into the black abyss of the alcove where the unwholesome bed
stood, and not neglecting, like the true woman I was, to look underneath
and even to poke under it with the handle of a broom. I raised the
windows and threw open the batten-shutters, and through the darkness
tried to measure the distance to the street below. Not only that, but I
also speculated upon being able to climb out upon the railroad tracks,
should the worst come to the worst.

What worst? What did I fear? I don't know. I did not exactly know then,
and I scarcely know now. It may have been the promptings of what is
popularly termed "woman's intuition." No more do I know why I then and
there resolved that I should sleep with my shoes and stockings on; and
further, if possible, I determined to keep awake through the long night
before me.

I closed the windows and returned to a further inspection of the room,
stopping before the open trunk to examine some of the many books it
contained. One by one I opened and examined the volumes; a few of them
were romances of the Laura Jean Libbey school of fiction, but the
majority were hymnals inscribed severally on the fly-leaf with the names
"Faith Manners," "Hope Manners," "Patience Manners." Across the room the
bottles on the mantel shone vaguely in the shadow. I carried the lamp
over, and placing it in the little cleared-out space among them, began
to examine the bottles with idle curiosity. "Wild Crab Apple," "Jockey
Club," "Parma Violet," "Heliotrope," I read on the dainty labels,
lifting out the ground-glass corks and smelling the lingering fragrance
which yet attached to each empty vial. Of these there must have been two
dozen or more.

And there were other bottles, also empty, but not perfume-bottles. Of
these others there were more than a dozen. At first I did not quite
comprehend the purport of the printing on their labels, and it was not
until I had studied some half a dozen of them that the sickening horror
of their meaning dawned upon me fully. There was no mistaking them; the
language was too unblushingly plain. They were the infamous nostrums of
the malpractitioner; and in the light of this loathsome revelation there
was but one thing for me to do: I had to get out of that room, and
before He