very humble house. Only a flat of three rooms on the third
floor of a tall tenement-house in a back street near the river. A
bedroom, a tiny parlor and a kitchen, which was also an eating-room,
made up the suite. The Briggses did all their daylight living in the
last-named apartment. The floor was painted yellow; the walls were
whitewashed; the furniture was homely, substantial and well-kept.

Everything was shining clean, and both windows were full of plants, many
of them in flower. Mrs. Briggs was fully persuaded in her own mind that
no other woman in the city had such a tale of daily mercies as herself.
Among them were the southern exposure of those windows and the
circumstance that a gap in the buildings back of them let in the
sunshine freely. Her nasturtiums blossomed there all winter; from a pot
she had suspended by strings from the top of the casing, sweet alysseum
flowed downward like a fountain of soft green waters tipped with white;
scarlet geraniums shot up rank shoots that had to be pruned into
reasonableness, and as to Christmas roses--"But there!" the worthy soul
would assure her acquaintances, "_they_ do beat everything!"

This winter the calla was about to bloom. A kind lady had given the bulb
to Mrs. Briggs's son, and there was no telling the store he set by it.

Topliffe Briggs--alias, Top, Senior--was an engineer on the great North,
East, West and South Railway. He sat at the tea-table with his wife and
son at five-thirty one cloudy February afternoon. His next train went
out at six-forty-five. He had run "Her" into the station at four, and
his house was but two blocks away. Mrs. Briggs could see from those
unparalleled kitchen-windows the bridge by which the track crossed the
river separating the town from the marshes, and could calculate to a
minute when the familiar step would be heard on the stairs.

"You see we live by railroad time," was her modest boast. "And my
husband always comes straight home." She did not emphasize the "my,"
knowing in her compassionate heart what other husbands were prone to lag
by the way until they came home late and crookedly.

Top, Senior, was on time to-day. "I ken trust Her with Bartlett, you
see," he remarked to his wife. "He won't leave tel she's all trig an'
tidy for the next trip. I wisht I could be as sure o' Stokes!"

Mrs. Briggs looked up inquiringly.

"Stokes is a clever fellow," pursued Top Senior regretfully, slicing
vigorously into the cold corned