t; but soon her male
relatives began to drop in to smoke a pipe with her in the evening. A
little later on, the supper table was left standing for those who were
always ready to "take a bite."--The farmer had never heard of the camel
who first got his head into the tent, but it gradually dawned upon him
that he was half supporting the whole Irish tribe down at the shanty.
Every evening, while he shivered in his best room, he was compelled to
hear the coarse jests and laughter in the adjacent apartment. One night
his bitter thoughts found expression: "I might as well open a free
house for the keeping of man and beast."

He had endured this state of affairs for some time simply because the
woman did the essential work in her offhand, slapdash style, and left
him unmolested to his brooding as long as he did not interfere with her
ideas of domestic economy. But his impatience and the sense of being
wronged were producing a feeling akin to desperation. Every week there
was less and less to sell from the dairy; chickens and eggs
disappeared, and the appetites of those who dropped in to "kape Bridgy
from bein' a bit lonely" grew more voracious.

Thus matters had drifted on until this March day when he had taken two
calves to market. He had said to the kitchen potentate that he would
take supper with a friend in town and therefore would not be back
before nine in the evening. This friend was the official keeper of the
poorhouse and had been a crony of Holcroft's in early life. He had
taken to politics instead of farming, and now had attained to what he
and his acquaintances spoke of as a "snug berth." Holcroft had
maintained with this man a friendship based partly on business
relations, and the well-to-do purveyor for paupers always gave his old
playmate an honest welcome to his private supper table, which differed
somewhat from that spread for the town's pensioners.

On this occasion the gathering storm had decided Holcroft to return
without availing himself of his friend's hospitality, and he is at last
entering the lane leading from the highway to his doorway. Even as he
approaches his dwelling he hears the sound of revelry and readily
guesses what is taking place.

Quiet, patient men, when goaded beyond a certain point, are capable of
terrible ebullitions of anger, and Holcroft was no exception. It
seemed to him that night that the God he had worshiped all his life was
in league with man against him. The blood