t see the look of fire in her eyes as he went out, because he was
not looking at her eye. She passed out, and Doc Spaulding, who has got a
heart in him as big as a box car, saw it, and touching his broad brimmed
felt hat he said, in a whisper:

"Madame, you better drop into a millinery store and fasten up your--"

But she passed him on a run, and was just going into a hardware
store, with her hand on her pistol pocket, when Jule Keyes happened along.
Now, Jule would consider himself a horse thief if he should allow a woman
to go along the street with anything the matter with her clothes, and he
not warn her of the consequences, so he stopped and told her that she must
excuse him, a perfect stranger, for mentioning her petticoat, but the fact
was that it was coming off.

[Illustration: MYSTERY OF A WOMAN'S CLOTHES!]

By this time the woman was mad. She bought a pistol and started for the
depot, firmly resolved to kill the first man that molested her. She did
not meet anybody until she arrived at the Junction, and she sat down in
the depot to rest before the train came.

Pierce, the hotel man, is one of the most noticin' persons anywhere, and
she hadn't been seated a York minute before his eye caught the discrepancy
in her apparel.

He tried to get the telegraph operator and the expressman to go
and tell her about it, but they wouldn't, so he went and took a seat near
her.

"It is a warm day, madame," said Pierce, looking at the red strip at the
bottom of her dress.

She drew her pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Pierce, who was
trembling in every leg, and said:

"Look-a-here, you young cuss. I have had half a dozen grown persons down
town tell me my petticoat was coming off, and I have stood it because I
thought they were old enough to know what they were talking about, but
when it comes to boys of your age coming around thinking they know all
about women's clothes it is too much, and the shooting is going to
commence."

Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a
white greyhound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did. As she
was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her:

"Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized," but she rushed into the
car, and was seen no more.

Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fashion calls for a
red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes.
But they were all serious enou