quickened by the presence of the increasing crowd, burst into a
screaming demand for the person who sent the "dead" beet to her.

"Dead beat!--ha, ha, ha!" laughed the three sisters convulsively, at
once realizing the appropriateness of the joke and excitedly enjoying
it; "dead beat, eh? we didn't do it!" "But," added Hannah, maliciously,
"if you do find the person as did send it, Mrs. Winslow, and will send
'em around, we'll board 'em for a month free!"

There was war, direful war, imminent; and no one could imagine what
might have resulted had the conflict of tongues culminated in a conflict
of hands. But to have seen the three ancient, prim, and trembling women
on the one side, and the ponderous, though handsome Mrs. Winslow on the
other--the old maids either with arms akimbo or with hands firmly
clenched upon the counter's edge as if to compel restraint, their bodies
weaving back and forth, their heads bobbing up and down, and their stray
frills and curls wildly dancing as if each particular hair was in a mad
ecstasy of its own; and Mrs. Winslow, upon her side of the counter, in a
perfect frenzy of excitement, stamping her feet, jumping backward and
forward, bringing her clenched hand down upon the counter with terrible
force for a woman, and shaking it furiously at the agitated row of old
maids, would be to have witnessed a marvellous improvement upon any
form of the Punch and Judy show ever exhibited.

[Illustration: _"A marvelous improvement over any form of the Punch and
Judy show ever exhibited."--_]

Bristol saw that unless they were separated he would become implicated
in a case of assault and battery, and after great effort pacified the
women sufficiently to enable him to pilot his landlady out of the
restaurant, through the streets and finally into her own apartments,
where she passed the remainder of the dreary day in weeping, storms of
baffled rage, or protracted applications to the spirits which can be
controlled, whether one is a spiritualist or not, so long as money lasts
and total prohibition is not enforced.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Cast down.-- "Trifles."-- A charitable Offering.--
Dreariness.-- Going Crazy.-- An interrupted Seance.-- A
new Form of the Devil.-- The Red-herring Expedition and
its Result.-- A mad Dutchman.-- Desolation.-- An order for
a Coffin.-- The sympathizing Undertaker, Mr. Boxem.

Mrs. Winslow now began to show great perturbation of spirits. I