ing past, loaded with passengers. She saw a little
boy in a flat leather cap whistling and calling for an unseen dog,
slapping his small knee from time to time. Two men came out of Frenna's
saloon, laughing heartily. Heise the harness-maker stood in the
vestibule of his shop, a bundle of whittlings in his apron of greasy
ticking. And all this was going on, people were laughing and living,
buying and selling, walking about out there on the sunny sidewalks,
while behind her in there--in there--in there----

Heise started back from the sudden apparition of a white-lipped woman
in a blue dressing-gown that seemed to rise up before him from his very
doorstep.

"Well, Mrs. McTeague, you did scare me, for----"

"Oh, come over here quick." Trina put her hand to her neck; swallowing
something that seemed to be choking her. "Maria's killed--Zerkow's
wife--I found her."

"Get out!" exclaimed Heise, "you're joking."

"Come over here--over into the house--I found her--she's dead."

Heise dashed across the street on the run, with Trina at his heels, a
trail of spilled whittlings marking his course. The two ran down the
alley. The wild-game peddler, a woman who had been washing down the
steps in a neighboring house, and a man in a broad-brimmed hat stood at
Zerkow's doorway, looking in from time to time, and talking together.
They seemed puzzled.

"Anything wrong in here?" asked the wild-game peddler as Heise and Trina
came up. Two more men stopped on the corner of the alley and Polk Street
and looked at the group. A woman with a towel round her head raised
a window opposite Zerkow's house and called to the woman who had been
washing the steps, "What is it, Mrs. Flint?"

Heise was already inside the house. He turned to Trina, panting from his
run.

"Where did you say--where was it--where?"

"In there," said Trina, "farther in--the next room." They burst into the
kitchen.

"LORD!" ejaculated Heise, stopping a yard or so from the body, and
bending down to peer into the gray face with its brown lips.

"By God! he's killed her."

"Who?"

"Zerkow, by God! he's killed her. Cut her throat. He always said he
would."

"Zerkow?"

"He's killed her. Her throat's cut. Good Lord, how she did bleed! By
God! he's done for her in good shape this time."

"Oh, I told her--I TOLD her," cried Trina.

"He's done for her SURE this time."

"She said she could always manage--Oh-h! It's horrible."

"He's done for her sure this trip.