x it," and
he pointed to the bottom of her dress.

She gave him a look which froze his blood, and shaking her dress out she
went on. He said it was the last time he would ever try to help a woman
in distress.

She sailed along down to a grocery store and stopped to look at some
grapes, when the practiced eye of Hon. Peter Brook saw that something
was wrong. To think is to act with Peter, and he at once said:

"Miss, your petticoat seems to be dropping off. You can go in the store
and get behind that box of codfish and fix it if you want to."

Now that was a kind thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman
might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind
his own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she
marched off just a trifle mad.

She went into the postoffice to mail a postal card, just as Mr. Moak,
the postmaster, came out of his private office with Hon. L. B. Caswell,
the congressman. Mr. Moak, without the aid of his glasses, saw that
there was liable to be trouble, so he asked Caswell to excuse him a
moment, and turning to the delivery window where she was asking the
clerk what time the mail came in, he said:

"I beg a thousand pardons, madame. It ill becomes a stranger to speak
to one so fair without an introduction, but I believe that I am not
violating the civil service rules laid down by Mr. Hayes for the
guidance of postmasters when I tell you, lady, that something has broke
loose and that the red garment that you fain would hide from the gaze
of the world has asserted itself and appears to the naked eye about two
chains and three links below your dress. I am going abroad, to visit Joe
Lindon, the independent candidate for sheriff, and you can step into the
back office and take a reef in it."

He did not see the look of fire in her eyes as he went out, because he
was not looking at her eye. She passed out, and Doc Spaulding, who has
got a heart in him as big as a box car, saw it, and touching his broad
brimmed felt hat he said, in a whisper:

"Madame, you better drop into a millinery store and fasten up your--"

But she passed him on a run, and was just going into a hardware store,
with her hand on her pistol pocket, when Jule Keyes happened along. Now,
Jule would consider himself a horse thief if he should allow a woman to
go along the street with anything the matter with her clothes, and he
not warn her of the consequences, so he stopped and told he