y the universe if she thought the universe merited
this proceeding.

One day Carrie Dungen came across from her kitchen with speed. She had
a great deal of grist. "Oh," she cried, "Henry Johnson got away from
where they was keeping him, and came to town last night, and scared
everybody almost to death."

Martha was shining a dish-pan, polishing madly. No reasonable person
could see cause for this operation, because the pan already glistened
like silver. "Well!" she ejaculated. She imparted to the word a deep
meaning. "This, my prophecy, has come to pass." It was a habit.

The overplus of information was choking Carrie. Before she could go on
she was obliged to struggle for a moment. "And, oh, little Sadie
Winter is awful sick, and they say Jake Winter was around this morning
trying to get Doctor Trescott arrested. And poor old Mrs. Farragut
sprained her ankle in trying to climb a fence. And there's a crowd
around the jail all the time. They put Henry in jail because they
didn't know what else to do with him, I guess. They say he is
perfectly terrible."

Martha finally released the dish-pan and confronted the headlong
speaker. "Well!" she said again, poising a great brown rag. Kate had
heard the excited new-comer, and drifted down from the novel in her
room. She was a shivery little woman. Her shoulder-blades seemed to be
two panes of ice, for she was constantly shrugging and shrugging.
"Serves him right if he was to lose all his patients," she said
suddenly, in blood-thirsty tones. She snipped her words out as if her
lips were scissors.

"Well, he's likely to," shouted Carrie Dungen. "Don't a lot of people
say that they won't have him any more? If you're sick and nervous,
Doctor Trescott would scare the life out of you, wouldn't he? He would
me. I'd keep thinking."

Martha, stalking to and fro, sometimes surveyed the two other women
with a contemplative frown.

XX

After the return from Connecticut, little Jimmie was at first much
afraid of the monster who lived in the room over the carriage-house.
He could not identify it in any way. Gradually, however, his fear
dwindled under the influence of a weird fascination. He sidled into
closer and closer relations with it.

One time the monster was seated on a box behind the stable basking in
the rays of the afternoon sun. A heavy crepe veil was swathed about
its head.

Little Jimmie and many companions came around the corner of the
stable. They were all in