."

Peter hobbled to the front door with him. He had not gone so far as
the parlor once while Mr. Ladley was in the house.

* * * * *

They had had a sale of spring flowers at the store that day, and Mr.
Reynolds had brought me a pot of white tulips. That night I hung my
mother's picture over the mantel in the dining-room, and put the
tulips beneath it. It gave me a feeling of comfort; I had never seen
my mother's grave, or put flowers on it.

CHAPTER X

I have said before that I do not know anything about the law. I
believe that the Ladley case was unusual, in several ways. Mr. Ladley
had once been well known in New York among the people who frequent the
theaters, and Jennie Brice was even better known. A good many lawyers,
I believe, said that the police had not a leg to stand on, and I know
the case was watched with much interest by the legal profession.
People wrote letters to the newspapers, protesting against Mr. Ladley
being held. And I believe that the district attorney, in taking him
before the grand jury, hardly hoped to make a case.

But he did, to his own surprise, I fancy, and the trial was set for
May. But in the meantime, many curious things happened.

In the first place, the week following Mr. Ladley's arrest my house
was filled up with eight or ten members of a company from the Gaiety
Theater, very cheerful and jolly, and well behaved. Three men, I
think, and the rest girls. One of the men was named Bellows, John
Bellows, and it turned out that he had known Jennie Brice very well.

From the moment he learned that, Mr. Holcombe hardly left him. He
walked to the theater with him and waited to walk home again. He took
him out to restaurants and for long street-car rides in the mornings,
and on the last night of their stay, Saturday, they got gloriously
drunk together--Mr. Holcombe, no doubt, in his character of
Ladley--and came reeling in at three in the morning, singing. Mr.
Holcombe was very sick the next day, but by Monday he was all right,
and he called me into the room.

"We've got him, Mrs. Pitman," he said, looking mottled but cheerful.
"As sure as God made little fishes, we've got him." That was all he
would say, however. It seemed he was going to New York, and might be
gone for a month. "I've no family," he said, "and enough money to keep
me. If I find my relaxation in hunting down criminals, it's a harmless
and cheap amusement, and--it's my own busi