ed.

"She wouldn't let me. She said how you must be taught a lesson,"
replied the girl, feeling that she must choose between two potentates,
and deciding quickly in favor of the farmer. She had been losing faith
in her mother's wisdom a long time, and this night's experience had
banished the last shred of it.

Some rather bitter words rose to Holcroft's lips, but he restrained
them. He felt that he ought not to disparage the mother to the child.
As Mrs. Wiggins grew warm, and imbibed the generous coffee, her
demeanor thawed perceptibly and she graciously vouchsafed the remark,
"Ven you're hout late hag'in hi'll look hafter ye."

Mrs. Mumpson had not been so far off as not to hear Jane's explanation,
as the poor child found to her cost when she went up to bed.

Chapter X.

A Night of Terror

As poor, dazed, homeless Alida passed out into the street after the
revelation that she was not a wife and never had been, she heard a
voice say, "Well, Hanner wasn't long in bouncing the woman. I guess
we'd better go up now. Ferguson will need a lesson that he won't soon
forget."

The speaker of these words was Mrs. Ferguson's brother, William
Hackman, and his companion was a detective. The wife had laid her
still sleeping child down on the lounge and was coolly completing
Alida's preparations for dinner. Her husband had sunk back into a chair
and again buried his face in his hands. He looked up with startled,
bloodshot eyes as his brother-in-law and the stranger entered, and then
resumed his former attitude.

Mrs. Ferguson briefly related what had happened, and then said, "Take
chairs and draw up."

"I don't want any dinner," muttered the husband.

Mr. William Hackman now gave way to his irritation. Turning to his
brother, he relieved his mind as follows: "See here, Hank Ferguson, if
you hadn't the best wife in the land, this gentleman would now be
giving you a promenade to jail. I've left my work for weeks, and spent
a sight of money to see that my sister got her rights, and, by thunder!
she's going to have 'em. We've agreed to give you a chance to brace up
and be a man. If we find out there isn't any man in you, then you go
to prison and hard labor to the full extent of the law. We've fixed
things so you can't play any more tricks. This man is a private
detective. As long as you do the square thing by your wife and child,
you'll be let alone. If you try to sneak off, you'll be nabbed. Now,
if you a