d gave
the usual written slip of paper containing the selected numbers;
loudly proclaiming her good luck, the girl then went away. She was an
accomplice to whom a "piece" had been secretly given after the drawn
numbers were in.

Of course this hit was the sensation of the day among the policy-buyers
at that office, and brought in large gains.

The wretched woman who had just seen five hundred dollars vanish into
nothing instead of becoming, as under the wand of an enchanter, a
great heap of gold, listened in a kind of maze to what passed around
her--listened and let the tempter get to her ear again. She went away,
stooping in her gait as one bearing a heavy burden. Before an hour had
passed hope had lifted her again into confidence. She had to make but
one venture more to double on the risk of the day previous, and secure a
fortune that would make both herself and daughters independent for life.

Another sale of good stocks, another gambling venture and another loss,
swelling the aggregate in this wild and hopeless "doubling" experiment
to over a thousand dollars.

But she was not cured. As regularly as a drunkard goes to the bar went
she to the policy-shops, every day her fortune growing less. Poverty
began to pinch. The house in which she lived with her daughters was
sold, and the unhappy family shrunk into a single room in a third-rate
boarding-house. But their income soon became insufficient to meet the
weekly demand for board. Long before this the daughters had sought for
something to do by which to earn a little money. Pride struggled hard
with them, but necessity was stronger than pride.

We finish the story in a few words. In a moment of weakness, with want
and hard work staring her in the face, one of the daughters married
a man who broke her heart and buried her in less than two years. The
other, a weak and sickly girl, got a situation as day governess in the
family of an old friend of her father's, where she was kindly treated,
but she lived only a short time after her sister's death.

And still there was no abatement of the mother's infatuation. She was
more than half insane on the subject of policy gambling, and confident
of yet retrieving her fortunes.

At the time Pinky Swett and her friend in evil saw her come gliding up
from the restaurant in faded mourning garments and closely veiled, she
was living alone in a small, meagrely furnished room, and cooking her
own food.

Everything left to her a