asked for work
we were glad to take him. He wanted the smallest possible wages and
was willing to do everything; he even cooked quite nicely. At first he
was jumpy--he had asked if many strangers went by; but then when no
one appeared he got easier.... He got easier and began to do extra
things for me. I thanked him--until I understood. Then I asked father
to send him away, but he was afraid; and, before I could get up my
courage to do it, Nicholas spoke----

"He said he was crazy about me, and would I please try and be good to
him. He had always wanted to marry, he went on, and live right, but
things had gone against him. I told him that he was impertinent and
that he would have to go at once; but he cried and begged me not to
say that, not to get him 'started.'"

That, John Woolfolk recalled, was precisely what the man had said to
him.

"I went back to father and told him why he must send Nicholas off, but
father nearly suffocated. He turned almost black. Then I got
frightened and locked myself in my room, while Nicholas sat out on the
stair and sobbed all night. It was ghastly! In the morning I had to go
down, and he went about his duties as usual.

"That evening he spoke again, on the porch, twisting his hands exactly
as if he were making bread. He repeated that he wanted me to be nice
to him. He said something wrong would happen if I pushed him to it.

"I think if he had threatened to kill me it would have been more
possible than his hints and sobs. The thing went along for a month,
then six weeks, and nothing more happened. I started again and again
to tell them at the store, two miles back in the pines, but I could
never get away from Nicholas; he was always at my shoulder, muttering
and twisting his hands.

"At last I found something." She hesitated, glancing once more down
through the empty gloom, while her fingers swiftly fumbled in the band
of her waist.

"I was cleaning his room--it simply had to be done--and had out a
bureau drawer, when I saw this underneath. He was not in the house,
and I took one look at it, then put the things back as near as
possible as they were. I was so frightened that I slipped it in my
dress--had no chance to return it."

He took from her unresisting hand a folded rectangle of coarse grey
paper; and, opening it, found a small handbill with the crudely
reproduced photograph of a man's head with a long, drooping nose,
sleepy eyes in thick folds of flesh, and a lax under-