the shape of an infuriated woman,
forced her way into the shop. "I'll bet you have the money! Look at
her, boys! Look at the wife of the thief, with the stolen money in
diamonds in her ears and rings on her fingers. _She's_ got money if
_we've_ none. _She_ can pay for what she fancies, if we haven't a cent
to redeem the bed that's stolen from under us. Oh yes, buy it all, Mrs.
Spencer Tucker! buy the whole shop, Mrs. Spencer Tucker, do you hear?
And if you ain't satisfied then, buy my clothes, my wedding ring, the
only things your husband hasn't stolen."

"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Tucker coldly, turning towards the
door. But with a flying leap across the counter her relentless
adversary stood between her and retreat.

"You don't understand! Perhaps you don't understand that your husband
not only stole the hard labor of these men, but even the little money
they brought here and trusted to his thieving hands. Perhaps you don't
know that he stole my husband's hard earnings, mortgaged these very
goods you want to buy, and that he is to-day a convicted thief, a
forger, and a runaway coward. Perhaps, if you can't understand _me_,
you can read the newspaper. Look!" She exultingly opened the paper the
sheriff had been reading aloud, and pointed to the displayed headlines.
"Look! there are the very words, 'Forgery, Swindling, Embezzlement!' Do
you see? And perhaps you can't understand this. Look! 'Shameful Flight.
Abandons his Wife. Runs off with a Notorious'"--

"Easy, old gal, easy now. D--n it! Will you dry up? I say. _Stop_!"

It was too late! The sheriff had dashed the paper from the woman's
hand, but not until Mrs. Tucker had read a single line, a line such as
she had sometimes turned from with weary scorn in her careless perusal
of the daily shameful chronicle of domestic infelicity. Then she had
coldly wondered if there could be any such men and women. And now! The
crowd fell back before her; even the virago was silenced as she looked
at her face. The humorist's face was as white, but not as immobile, as
he gasped, "Christ! if I don't believe she knew nothin' of it!"

For a moment the full force of such a supposition, with all its
poignancy, its dramatic intensity, and its pathos, possessed the crowd.
In the momentary clairvoyance of enthusiasm they caught a glimpse of
the truth, and by one of the strange reactions of human passion they
only waited for a word of appeal or explanation from her lips to throw