n."

The other interruption was the redoubtable Mrs. Billings; her
brother, also a slubber, had arrived early, but had scarcely taken
two delightful, exquisite drinks before she came on the scene, her
eyes flashing, her hair disheveled, and her hand playing familiarly
with something under her apron.

Her presence threw them into a panic.

"Mine Gott!" said Billy, turning pale. "Eet es Meeses Billings an'
her crockery."

Half a dozen jubilants pointed out a long-haired man at a center
table talking proudly of his physical strength and bravery.

"Cris Ham?" beckoned Mrs. Billings, feeling nervously under her
apron. "Come with me!"

"I'll be along t'orectly, sis."

"You will come now," she said, and her hands began to move ominously
beneath her apron.

"To be sho'," he said as he walked out with her. "I didn't know you
felt that away about it, sis."

It was after ten o'clock when the quick roll of a buggy came up to
the door, and Richard Travis and Charley Biggers alighted.

They had both been drinking. Slowly, surely, Travis was going down in
the scale of degeneracy. Slowly the loose life he was leading was
lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he
would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night
he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the
most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect
which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant
homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to drag it from the
slums.

Charley Biggers was short and boyish, with a fat, round face. When he
laughed he showed a fine set of big, sensual teeth. His eyes were
jolly, flighty, insincere. Weakness was written all over him, from a
derby hat sitting back rakishly on his forehead to the small,
effeminate boot that fitted so neatly his small effeminate foot. He
had a small hand and his little sensual face had not a rough feature
on it. It was set off by a pudgy, half-formed dab of a nose that let
his breath in and out when his mouth happened to be shut. His eyes
were the eyes of one who sees no wrong in anything.

They came in and pulled off their gloves, daintily. They threw their
overcoats on a chair. Travis glanced around the circle of the four or
five who were left and said pompously:

"Come up, gentlemen, and have something at my expense." Then he
walked up to the bar.

They came. They considered it both a pleasur