ent many weeks.

Her baby soon began to show suffering, but this did not make her alter
her way, or drive her to appeal to Tom. She was ignorant of the
simplest things a mother needs to know, and never imagined her
abstinence could hurt her baby. So long as she went on nursing him, it
was all the same, she thought. He cried so much, that Tom made it a
reason with himself, and indeed gave it as one to Letty, for not coming
home at night: the child would not let him sleep; and how was he to do
his work if he had not his night's rest? It mattered little with
semi-mechanical professions like medicine or the law, but how was a man
to write articles such as he wrote, not to mention poetry, except he
had the repose necessary to the redintegration of his exhausted brain?
The baby went on crying, and the mother's heart was torn. The woman of
the house said he must be already cutting his teeth, and recommended
some devilish sirup. Letty bought a bottle with the next money she got,
and thought it did him good-because, lessening his appetite, it
lessened his crying, and also made him sleep more than he ought.

At last one night Tom came home very much the worse of drink, and in
maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle. The baby
shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him soundly for
ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook him roughly to
teach him the good manners of the world he had come to.

Thereat in Letty sprang up the mother, erect and fierce. She darted to
Tom, snatched the child from his arms, and turned to carry him to the
inner room. But, as the mother rose in Letty, the devil rose in Tom. If
what followed was not the doing of the real Tom, it was the doing of
the devil to whom the real Tom had opened the door. With one stride he
overtook his wife, and mother and child lay together on the floor. I
must say for him that, even in his drunkenness, he did not strike his
wife as ho would have struck a man; it was an open-handed blow he gave
her, what, in familiar language, is called a box on the ear, but for
days she carried the record of it on her cheek in five red finger-marks.

When he saw her on the floor, Tom's bedazed mind came to itself; he
knew what he had done, and was sobered. But, alas! even then he thought
more of the wrong he had done to himself as a gentleman than of the
grievous wound he had given his wife's heart. He took the baby, who had
ceased to cry as soon as he