re some male companion as vile as
she, with whom she would proceed to her old home, and in the presence of
her agonized husband and helpless, innocent children, threaten him with
every conceivable form of punishment, including death, and engage in
profanity and drunken orgies that would have disgraced the lowest
brothel in the land.

Mr. Bangs learned that after this sort of procedure for a considerable
period, she suddenly disappeared. Hosford took this opportunity to
dispose of his farm and remove with his motherless family to Iowa. Mr.
Bangs could not learn at Sheboygan what the woman's history had been
during that period, but vague rumors had floated back to the place that
she had become an army-follower, which was quite probable; but at the
close of the war she had assumed the _role_ of an abandoned adventuress,
and had wandered about the Pacific Slope until she had made too
extensive an acquaintance for her safety in that section, and from
thence had wandered through the country towards the East, seeking for
any kind of prey; and being hunted from place to place, under countless
_aliases_, until she had in a measure retrieved herself, as far as money
matters were concerned, and being careful of herself physically, had
regained her good looks which her former terrible dissipation had almost
destroyed, and had eventually so insinuated herself into the affections
of a rich somebody that she had been furnished money with which to
secure a divorce from Hosford, which had been granted in Chicago about
a year and a half previous; when she had come on to Sheboygan Falls and
while there made her boasts that she would soon marry one of the richest
men in New York State, as soon as his wife died, which wouldn't be very
long she had hoped and believed. Besides this, the rumors went, she had
failed to marry that richest somebody in New York State, and papers had
been seen containing an account of the woman and Lyon, her suit against
him, and the fact, which particularly interested her old neighbors, that
she had engaged no lawyer whatever, but had drawn and filed the bill of
complaint herself.

In fact, the entire community were in a state of great excitement over
the woman who was also creating much excitement in the East, and each
person had his or her story to tell of some striking peculiarity or
previous adventure of the madam's, and it required a great amount of
sifting and careful work for Mr. Bangs to secure what he ca