hissed. 'I'll give you the best price in the market.'

Henry shuddered, but replied, half pushing her outside: 'Certainly,
certainly. Good-afternoon.'

'I'll buy them at your own price--ah, I see them coming, coming into
my bag.'

The door closed on her grotesque sibylline intensity, and Henry
clasped his wife tremblingly to his bosom and pressed a long kiss upon
her fragrant cherry lips.

Later on he explained that the crazy old clo'-woman was known to the
children, as to everyone in the neighbourhood, as 'Granny.'

III

In the bearing of her first child the second Mrs. Elkman died. The
rosy face became a white angelic mask, the dainty figure lay in
statuesque severity, and a screaming, bald-headed atom of humanity was
the compensation for this silence. Henry Elkman was overwhelmed by
grief and superstition.

'For three things women die in childbirth,' kept humming in his brain
from his ancient Hebrew lore. He did not remember what they were,
except that one was the omission of the wife to throw into the fire
the lump of dough from the Sabbath bread. But these neglects could not
be visited on a Christian, he thought dully. The only distraction of
his grief was the infant's pressing demand on his attention.

It was some days before the news penetrated to the old woman.

'It is his punishment,' she said with solemn satisfaction. 'Now my
Fanny's spirit will rest.'

But she did not gloat over the decree of the God of Israel as she had
imagined beforehand, nor did she call for the dead woman's old clo'.
She was simply content--an unrighteous universe had been set straight
again like a mended watch. But she did call, without her bag, to
inquire if she could be of service in this tragic crisis.

'Out of my sight, you and your evil eye!' cried Henry as he banged the
door in her face.

Natalya burst into tears, torn by a chaos of emotions. So she was
still to be shut out.

IV

The next news that leaked into Natalya's wizened ear was as startling
as Madge's death. Henry had married again. Doubtless with the same
pretext of the children's needs he had taken unto himself a third
wife, and again without the decencies of adequate delay. And this wife
was a Jewess, as of yore. Henry had reverted matrimonially to the
fold. Was it conscience, was it terror? Nobody knew. But everybody
knew that the third Mrs. Elkman was a bouncing beauty of a good
orthodox stock, that she brought with her fifty pounds in cash,
be