never gone to the hotel all this talk would never have come upon
them.

As for the Senator, he went away decidedly ruffled by this crude
occurrence. Neighborhood slanders are bad enough on their own plane,
but for a man of his standing to descend and become involved in one
struck him now as being a little bit unworthy. He did not know what to
do about the situation, and while he was trying to come to some
decision several days went by. Then he was called to Washington, and
he went away without having seen Jennie again.

In the mean time the Gerhardt family struggled along as before.
They were poor, indeed, but Gerhardt was willing to face poverty if
only it could be endured with honor. The grocery bills were of the
same size, however. The children's clothing was steadily wearing out.
Economy had to be practised, and payments stopped on old bills that
Gerhardt was trying to adjust.

Then came a day when the annual interest on the mortgage was due,
and yet another when two different grocery-men met Gerhardt on the
street and asked about their little bills. He did not hesitate to
explain just what the situation was, and to tell them with convincing
honesty that he would try hard and do the best he could. But his
spirit was unstrung by his misfortunes. He prayed for the favor of
Heaven while at his labor, and did not hesitate to use the daylight
hours that he should have had for sleeping to go about--either
looking for a more remunerative position or to obtain such little jobs
as he could now and then pick up. One of them was that of cutting
grass.

Mrs. Gerhardt protested that he was killing himself, but he
explained his procedure by pointing to their necessity.

"When people stop me on the street and ask me for money I have no
time to sleep."

It was a distressing situation for all of them.

To cap it all, Sebastian got in jail. It was that old coal-stealing
ruse of his practised once too often. He got up on a car one evening
while Jennie and the children waited for him, and a railroad detective
arrested him. There had been a good deal of coal stealing during the
past two years, but so long as it was confined to moderate quantities
the railroad took no notice. When, however, customers of shippers
complained that cars from the Pennsylvania fields lost thousands of
pounds in transit to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and other points,
detectives were set to work. Gerhardt's children were not the only
ones who prey