utlying hamlets; and for once he had had an opportunity that he could
not afford to refuse. He spent three days in Nettleton, won his case,
and came back in high good-humour. It was a rare mood with him, and
manifested itself on this occasion by his talking impressively at the
supper-table of the "rousing welcome" his old friends had given him. He
wound up confidentially: "I was a damn fool ever to leave Nettleton. It
was Mrs. Royall that made me do it."

Charity immediately perceived that something bitter had happened to him,
and that he was trying to talk down the recollection. She went up to bed
early, leaving him seated in moody thought, his elbows propped on the
worn oilcloth of the supper table. On the way up she had extracted from
his overcoat pocket the key of the cupboard where the bottle of whiskey
was kept.

She was awakened by a rattling at her door and jumped out of bed. She
heard Mr. Royall's voice, low and peremptory, and opened the door,
fearing an accident. No other thought had occurred to her; but when
she saw him in the doorway, a ray from the autumn moon falling on his
discomposed face, she understood.

For a moment they looked at each other in silence; then, as he put his
foot across the threshold, she stretched out her arm and stopped him.

"You go right back from here," she said, in a shrill voice that startled
her; "you ain't going to have that key tonight."

"Charity, let me in. I don't want the key. I'm a lonesome man," he
began, in the deep voice that sometimes moved her.

Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to hold him back
contemptuously. "Well, I guess you made a mistake, then. This ain't your
wife's room any longer."

She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust; and perhaps he
divined it or read it in her face, for after staring at her a moment
he drew back and turned slowly away from the door. With her ear to her
keyhole she heard him feel his way down the dark stairs, and toward
the kitchen; and she listened for the crash of the cupboard panel, but
instead she heard him, after an interval, unlock the door of the house,
and his heavy steps came to her through the silence as he walked down
the path. She crept to the window and saw his bent figure striding up
the road in the moonlight. Then a belated sense of fear came to her
with the consciousness of victory, and she slipped into bed, cold to the
bone.

A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twe