he superstructure of the Elevated, and shivered in the cutting
wind of the blizzard which was sweeping the city, "it would be simple."
She paused a moment later and halted against the wall of Jefferson
Market Court where a brick abutment broke the force of the bluster. Mary
was not so warmly clad as this rigorous weather warranted. The last
thing she had taken to the sign of the three balls was a heavy cloak.

"For me," she said to herself as she bent her head into the smother of
wind-driven snow, "life ended there in that office--when he died. If I
had just myself to consider I don't think God would blame me much for
ending it."

But it was not only herself she had to consider. The doctors told her
that her mother's tenuous life strand might snap at any time in sudden
death or might stretch indefinitely in helplessness and dethroned
reason. Even in the mean lodgings they occupied other tenants were
sometimes prone to the drawing of lines, and Mary knew that the landlord
did not regard it as helpful to his business to have "a crazy lady in
the house. Some guests objected." So when she began falling into arrears
she did not delude herself with false hopes of charitable indulgence.
Her father, too, though he had dropped down the scale of life to a
forlorn old man who loafed his hours away in saloons until he was turned
out, was still her father and while breath remained in his disreputable
body his stomach required food as well as drink.

The girl went in at the dark door of the house, which was not greatly
different from a tenement, and climbed the double flight of stairs. From
a place by the window her mother looked up from her chair where she sat
incessantly rocking. She held in her lap an old blank book and her
expression was vacant.

"I've just been reading Ham's diary," she querulously announced. Mary
shuddered. Of late her mother was always reading that old record of
boyhood ambitions, which to her was always new since no memory--save
those of other years--outlasted the hour.

"Ham thinks he's going to be a great man some day and I hope he's right.
He's a good boy and a dutiful son and--"

But the daughter was not listening. Her eyes had encountered an envelope
on the dresser mirror, and, as she tore the end of it, she felt a
premonition of its contents.

"How about some money on account?" questioned the writer. "Unless I get
some by tomorrow, I want my rooms vacated."

So the ultimatum had come. Mary Burt