become dogmatic on your own side," said I, rising
to knock the ashes out of my pipe. "If it's the law of Karma that's
responsible for her having been left to shift for herself at so early an
age, it's the same law that's after her now, and I wouldn't interfere
with its operations, if I were you."

"You don't in the least understand what you are talking about," and
Belle sailed from the room to settle a noisy dispute in the nursery.

CHAPTER II.

THROUGH that winter I caught occasionally a glimpse of Mary Mason on the
street, but as I had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, I did not
stop to ask her how she was getting on. My wife told me, however, that
she lived in a room over a store down town, and took her meals out, and
that she was succeeding very well with her subscription list.

"The girl is all right, if only the gossips would let her alone. Some of
them assert that she had a child in the Refuge, and though the ladies on
our committee indignantly deny that, they shake their heads, and say of
course they don't know anything about her now."

"It's the only excitement a lot of these women have," said I. "They
wouldn't read a French novel for the world, and some of them wouldn't be
seen in a theater, so they have to satisfy their morbid craving for
sensationalism by hearing and repeating all sorts of unsavory tales--and
they do it in the name of charity! They're very sorry that there is so
much wickedness in the world, but since it is there, they enjoy the
investigation of details, and it doesn't matter very much whether
they're doing any good or not."

"There aren't any details to investigate, so far as Mary Mason is
concerned. I took pains to make sure of that, when I heard that a big
hulk of a machinist, who rooms on the same flat, was telling lies about
her, just because she refused to have anything to say to him."

When I was leaving the _Echo_ office at noon one day I saw Henderson's
handsome black span, with the wreck of a sleigh behind them, come down
the street at a full gallop, and I was just debating with myself whether
my duty as a citizen, which called me to attempt to stop the brutes, was
stronger than my duty to my wife and family, which bade me stay where I
was, when a young lady jumped the snow ridge at the edge of the sidewalk
and flung herself at the bit of the nearest horse. The powerful animal
swung her right off her feet, but he was checked for an instant, and in
that instant a