She was ashamed to go out any more except
by night, sulking all day indoors, instead, and rocking in a hammock.
As I said before, she'd never been right since Benny's death, and though
she had pulled up for a time and acted very much improved she slumped at
last, and slumped worse than she ever had been. Her old surly fits on
the Line were nothing compared with the rampageous way she went on now,
and if there was ever a she devil on earth or a man driven plumb
distracted it was Rosie and me in our splendid house.

When she was taken with those spells of hers she was nothing less than a
cursing, snarling, foaming maniac, and stopped at nothing to make me a
spectacle and a byword. Again and again she chased me out with an ax;
she would fling into the store with nothing over her but a single dirty
garment, and pull down whole shelves of stuff out of sheer devilment,
screaming with rage. She slandered everybody, and reflected on every
woman who was unfortunate enough to know us, so that I was sued twice
for defamation--or rather she--with verdict and damages, all that I
could do being to hold up my hands and tell the judge she wasn't
answerable for her actions. Hell, that was what it was--straight,
unadulterated hell--with no way out that I could see till I died or she.

It was about this time I began to notice a fellow named Tyne on the
beach--a thin, tall, hungry-looking man in a derby hat, very shabby
black clothes, and no socks--who was said to be a busted doctor landed
off of a French bark. His name came up before the Council, but as he had
no papers or diplomas to show, and was hazy besides where he came from
and how, we refused to let him practice, and were insulted besides at
his daring to ask us.

Well, one day this Tyne, he comes into my store, very hang-dog, and so
famished and shaky that I couldn't but feel sorry for him, and he asks
for the job of pushing my handcart around the beach, getting stuff out
of Customs, and making deliveries--he having heard I had fired my Nieue
boy for pilfering.

"Fifty cents a day, Doc," I says. "It's hardly fit for a white man."

"My God," he says, in a real gentleman's voice, "I'm starving. I'd push
anything anywhere for a bite of bread and a corner of a shed to sleep
in. Ain't there a spark of charity in this town for a white man who is
down on his uppers?"

I answered him with a can of sardines and some pilot break, which he
went out and wolfed right there on the front