s of watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her
with renewed vivacity. But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing
presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief. When
the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in copious
draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle, and even
pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her previous
inhospitality.

"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you that
Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.

Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a cocktail in
such delightful imitation of the fashionable barkeeper's dexterity that
her guests were convulsed with admiration. Even Ira was struck with
this revelation of a youthfulness that five years of household care had
checked, but never yet subdued. He had forgotten that he had married a
child. Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel,
had he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very
inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits. It was another face
that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of abstraction that
struck a chill to his heart. It was not HIS Sue that was standing there,
but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, by
some one else's hand.

Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring she
was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the liquor she
had pretended to taste, went early to bed. The deputy, not finding the
gloomy company of the husband to his taste, presently ensconced himself
on the floor, before the kitchen fire, in the blankets that she had
provided. The constable followed his example. In a few moments the house
was silent and sleeping, save for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk
on his chest and his hands gripping the arms of his chair before the
dying embers of his hearth.

He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an
inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to grasp
the situation before him. The common sense that had hitherto governed
his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there was
nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her coquetry and aberration
would not pass as easily. But it recurred to him that she had never
shown this coquetry or aberration to HIM during their own brief
courtship,--that she had never looked or