elongs here
is out at a lecture," I said. "Come in here, Ikkie, and I'll find the
evening paper for you.

"'Ikkie'!" said Lida, and stood staring at me. I think I went white.

"The lady heah and I is old friends," Isaac said, with his splendid
manner. "Her mothah, Miss Lida, her mothah--"

But even old Isaac choked up at that, and I closed the door on him.

"How queer!" Lida said, looking at me. "So Isaac knew your mother?
Have you lived always in Allegheny, Mrs. Pitman?"

"I was born in Pittsburgh," I evaded. "I went away for a long time,
but I always longed for the hurry and activity of the old home town.
So here I am again."

Fortunately, like all the young, her own affairs engrossed her. She
was flushed with the prospect of meeting her lover, tremulous over
what the evening might bring. The middle-aged woman who had come back
to the hurry of the old town, and who, pushed back into an eddy of the
flood district, could only watch the activity and the life from behind
a "Rooms to Let" sign, did not concern her much. Nor should she have.

Mr. Howell came soon after. He asked for her, and going back to the
dining-room, kissed her quietly. He had an air of resolve, a sort of
grim determination, that was a relief from the half-frantic look he
had worn before. He asked to have Mr. Holcombe brought down, and so
behold us all, four of us, sitting around the table--Mr. Holcombe with
his note-book, I with my mending, and the boy with one of Lida's hands
frankly under his on the red table-cloth.

"I want to tell all of you the whole story," he began. "To-morrow I
shall go to the district attorney and confess, but--I want you all to
have it first. I can't sleep again until I get it off my chest. Mrs.
Pitman has suffered through me, and Mr. Holcombe here has spent money
and time--"

Lida did not speak, but she drew her chair closer, and put her other
hand over his.

"I want to get it straight, if I can. Let me see. It was on Sunday,
the fourth, that the river came up, wasn't it? Yes. Well, on the
Thursday before that I met you, Mr. Holcombe, in a restaurant in
Pittsburgh. Do you remember?"

Mr. Holcombe nodded.

"We were talking of crime, and I said no man should be hanged on
purely circumstantial evidence. You affirmed that a well-linked chain
of circumstantial evidence could properly hang a man. We had a long
argument, in which I was worsted. There was a third man at the
table--Bronson, the business manager of th