wife and children, and after a
fashion, to his horse.

The latter paid absolutely no attention to him when he said "Get-ap," or
when he applied the "gad"; she neither obeyed the command nor resented
the chastisement. She jogged along in her own sweet way quite as if he
were nowhere in the vicinity. His wife abused him, and his children
ignored him. No one, it would appear, had the slightest use or respect
for Lucius Fry.

He was, by profession, a well-digger. The installation of a water-works
system in Tinkletown had made him a well-digger in name only. For a
matter of five or six years, barring the last six months, he had been in
the employ of his wife. She took in washing, and it was his job to
collect and deliver the "wash" three times a week. In return for this he
received board and lodging and an occasional visit to the
moving-picture theatre. One of his daughters clerked in the
five-and-ten-cent store, and the other, aged twelve, was errand girl to
Miss Angie Nixon, the fashionable dressmaker.

Lucius had married very much above him, so to speak. That is to say, his
wife was something like nine or ten inches the taller of the two. When
they appeared on the street together,--which was seldom,--you could see
him only if you chanced to be on _that_ side of her. Mrs. Fry was nearly
six feet tall and very wide, but Lucius was not much over five feet two.
He had a receding chin that tried to secrete itself behind a scant,
dun-colored crop of whiskers, cultivated by him with two purposes in
view; first, to provide shelter for his shrinking chin, and second, to
avoid the arduous and unnecessary task of shaving.

[Illustration: _When they appeared on the street together_]

Roughly speaking, Lucius was a shiftless creature. It had long been the
consensus of opinion--freely expressed throughout Tinkletown--that he
did not amount to a tinker's dam.

However that may be, some six or seven months prior to the incidents
about to be related, Mr. Fry himself wrought a tremendous and
unbelievable change in the foregoing opinion. Almost in the wink of an
eyelash he passed through a process of transmogrification that not only
bewildered him but caused the entire community to sit up and take notice
of him.

It all came about in the oddest sort of way. For a number of years
Lucius had been in the habit of currying the old grey mare on Saturday
mornings. Away back in his mind lurked an hereditary respect for the
Sabbath. He wa