"Oh hell, Ab--what's the use? Tell 'em I'm out of it!"

Mrs. Markley seems to have shut him out of the G. A. R., thinking maybe
that the old boys and their wives were not of her social level, or
perhaps she had some idea of playing even with them, because their wives
had not recognised her; but she shut away much of her husband's social
comfort when she barred his comrades, and they in turn grew harder
toward him than they were at first. As the Markleys entered their second
year, Mrs. Markley alone in the big house, with only the new people from
the hotel to eat her dinners, and with only the beer-drinking crowd from
the West Side to dance in the attic ballroom, had much time to think,
and she bethought her of the lecturers who were upon the college lecture
course, whereupon John Markley had to carve for authors and explorers,
and an occasional Senator or Congressman, who, after a hard evening's
work on the platform, paid for his dinner and lodging by sitting up on a
gilded high-backed and uncomfortable chair in the stately reception-room
of the Markley home, talking John Markley into a snore, before Isabel
let them go to bed. Isabel sent the accounts of these affairs to the
office for us to print, with the lists of invited guests, who never
accepted. And the town grinned.

At the end of two years John Markley's fat wit told him that it was a
losing fight. He had been dropped from the head of the Merchants'
Association; he was cut off from the executive committee of the Fair; he
was not asked to serve on the railroad committee. His old friends, whom
he asked over to spend the evening at his house, always had good
excuses, which they gave him later over the telephone, and their wives,
who used to call him by his first name, scarcely recognised him on the
street. He quit coming to our office with pieces for the paper telling
the town his views on this or that local matter; and gradually gave up
the fight for his old place on the school board.

The clerks in the Markley Mortgage Company office say that he fell into
a moody way, and would come to the office and refuse to speak to anyone
for hours. Also, as the big house often glowed until midnight for a
dance of the socially impossible who used the Markley ballroom, rent
free, as a convenience, John Markley grew to have a sleepy look by day,
and lines came into his red, shaved face. He grew anxious about his
health, and a hundred worries tightened his belt and shook his g