azing.

"For this: The drink turns us mad! I'm late finding it out, but I've
found it! It sent me to jail with my wits all afire. My boy drank that
night, drank like a young beast, and lay on the floor of the cabin, they
tell me, after I went away; and he only sixteen, and his dead uncle stark
there beside him for company!"

By this time a goodly gathering was on the Green, and Mary was in her
element.

"And so," she said calmly, waxing eloquent as her power grew, "you and
the like of you would take an honest woman's living from her, and she
a God-be-praised widow at that, because you can't control the beast in
yourselves and can't train the cubs of your kennels!"

This was going to great lengths, and many a listener who sided with Mary
was chilled by her offensive words.

"Come! come!" warned Hornby, the father of the recently lured Jamsie,
"them ain't exactly womanly terms, are they?"

But Mary was on her high horse. Availing herself of the safety her sex
secured for her, she struck left and right without grace or favour, and
her audience gaped while they listened.

"Oh, I know! 'Tis this year a dry town with me ruined, and it's next year
a wet town with McAlpin, Hornby, or another creature in trousers taking
my place; and after that there will be no more dry town for ever and
ever! It's not morals you are after, but a man-controlled tavern. Blast
ye!" A sneer marked Mary's thin, dark face. "You want your drinks and
your freedom, but you say you fear for your lads. Shame on you! Have
I no lads?"

Silence.

"Have I not trained them in the way they should go? Do I fear for them?"
A grave silence, and McAlpin glared at Hornby, while an irreverent youth,
with a fish dangling from his hands, laughed and muttered:

"Like gorrems!"

"Play a man's part, Jerry McAlpin. 'Tis not for Jerry-Jo you fear; it's
my business you'd get from me, and you know it! Teach that lad of yours
to be decent, as I've trained mine. I have no fear for my boys! I know
what I'm talking about, and I tell you now, if my lads were like yours
I'd fling the business over, but I don't see why a decent woman, and her
a God-be-praised widow, should lose her living because you can't train
your brats in the way they should go. But this is mine! If you don't
stand by me and swear to do it here and now, it's not another drink one
of you shall get in my place till after things are settled."

This was going farther than Mary McAdam had ever gone bef