us to
reprint the item he said sadly: "The old settlers will remember
him--maybe. I don't know whether they will or not." He seemed a pitiful
figure as he dragged himself out of the office--so stooped and weazened,
and so utterly alone, but when he turned around and came back upon some
second thought, his teeth snapped viciously as he snarled: "Here, give
it back. I guess I don't want it printed. They don't care for me,
anyway."

The boys in his office told the boys in our office that the old man was
cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley
was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town,
who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys
quarrelled, and that she was cruel to him. Certain it is that she began
to feed on young boys, and made the old fellow sit up in his evening
clothes until impossible hours, for sheer appearance sake, while his bed
was piled with the wraps of boys and girls from what our paper called
the Hand-holders' Union, who were invading the Markley home, eating the
Markley olives and canned lobster, and dancing to the music of the
Markley pianola. Occasionally a young travelling man would be spoken of
by these young people as Isabel Markley's fellow.

Mrs. Markley began to make fun of her husband to the girls of the
third-rate dancing set whose mothers let them go to her house; also, she
reviled John Markley to the servants. It was known in the town that she
nicknamed him the "Goat." As for Markley, the fight was gone from him,
and his whole life was devoted to getting money. That part of his brain
which knew the accumulative secret kept its tireless energy; but his
emotions, his sensibilities, his passions seemed to be either atrophied
or burned out, and, sitting at his desk in the back room of the Mortgage
Company's offices, he looked like a busy spider spinning his web of gold
around the town. It was the town theory that he and Isabel must have
fought it out to a finish about the night sessions; for there came a
time when he went to bed at nine o'clock, and she either lighted up and
prepared to celebrate with the cheap people at home, or attached one of
her young men, and went out to some impossible gathering--generally
where there was much beer, and many risque things said, and the women
were all good fellows. And thus another year flew by.

One night, when the great house was still, John Markley grew sick and,
in th