ile longer. "I will
make it worth your while. Don't let any of her letters get by. I will
come to see her as soon as I recover from an attack of lumbago that has
laid me low. I don't mind confiding in you that I am hoping to make
Mrs. Waller my wife. We would have been married before if it had not
been for this nervous condition that has made it necessary for her to
be placed in confinement for the time being."

"Wretch! Miserable wretch!" stormed Josie.

"She, perhaps," the letter continued, "will not remember that she had
consented to marry me after a reasonable time should have elapsed since
the death of her husband. Part of her dementia was that she had never
cared for me, when the truth of the matter was nothing but her wifely
loyalty kept her from running away with me, even before Stephen Waller
went overseas."

"Just a pack of lies! And so he is going to see her just as soon as the
lumbago lets him up out of bed. Well, Josie O'Gorman, it looks as
though you would have to change jobs again."

From the postoffice Josie went to a ticket office. After consulting a
time table she bought a ticket, engaged a berth for that night, ran in
to see Alice Chisholm and tell her that she must leave town
immediately, giving her directions where to forward mail and repeat
telegrams.

"Ask Miss Denton to keep my room for me indefinitely. I'll pay whatever
it is. I may need it soon. Just tell her urgent business keeps me from
the city.

"Tell me, Alice--you seem to know the ins and outs of Atlanta people--
was there ever an affair between Mrs. Waller and Chester Hunt?"

"He was supposed to have courted her before she married Stephen Waller,
but it was a well-known fact that she did not like him. It was
astonishing to some of their acquaintances that Stephen Waller should
have made his stepbrother his executor because of Mrs. Waller's evident
dislike of him. Mr. Waller was devoted to him, however, and perhaps his
wife never let him know how she felt about Chester Hunt."

Josie went back to her place of service. Armed with a hot iron she
reported to the master.

"I bane come to press your back, sir."

"Can I trust you not to burn me?" the suffering man queried.

Josie wondered whether he could or not. "I'd like to make such a big
blister on him he could not put on a shirt for weeks to come," she
thought, but she put on an especially stupid expression and said dully,
"I never have burnt anything yet, sir."

Gently she