be the first scandal in his strain.

He is happily married, so far as this world knows. If he be bored with
the presence of Esther he alone possesses that secret. She does not.
He is the husband of a lady to whom there will some day come an added
fortune which will make her the richest woman in the West.

He is the reliance of the party. He is the one orator who remains
unanswered in joint debate. Quackery as it is, no opponent dares to
cross the path of David Lockwin. It is a common saying that to give an
opponent a date with Lockwin is to foretell the serious illness of the
opponent. It is a sham--this oratory--but it befools the city.

Can the fashionable church to which Esther belongs sustain the shock of
Lockwin's suicide? Behold the funeral of such a wight, once the
particular credit of the congregation, now the particular disgrace!

That forthcoming contest with Corkey!

Is it not uncomfortable? What is it Corkey is saying? Oh! yes,
Corkey, to be sure! "Mr. Corkey, I should have told you they will do
nothing. You must contest."

Here, therefore, are two men who are plunged into the deepest seethings
of mental action. The one has missed greatness by the distance of a
mere hand's grasp; the other is half crazed to find himself so fatally
conspicuous in society.

Let the rich, respectable, beloved, ambitious and eloquent Lockwin
hurry back to that problem: What to do when he shall arrive in Chicago?

Can the community be deceived? Let us see how it fared with Lockwin's
friend Orthwaite, who found life to be insupportable. The
respectability which so beclogs Lockwin had been secretly lost by
Orthwaite.

His shame would soon be exposed. Orthwaite returned to his home on the
last suburban train. He purposely appeared gay before his
train-acquaintances. He left the train in high spirits. He pursued a
lonely path toward home. He reached a stream. He set to work making
many marks of a desperate struggle. He placed a revolver at his heart
and fired. Then with unusual fortitude he threw the weapon in the
stream.

But the ruse was ineffectual. The keen eyes of the detectives and the
keener ear of scandal had the whole truth in a week's time. It was
suicide, said the press--bald, cowardly, pitiful.

How difficult! How difficult! Now let us set at that device of
mysterious disappearance. How far is that fair to a young wife? Why
should she wait and search and hope, although Esther woul