recalled
the days of Red's triumph. Red was only a dealer, and his trousers were
frayed at the bottom and he shaved but once a week. Then the Princess
used to come slinking up Main Street at night carrying a pistol under
her coat to use if she found the woman with him. Who the woman was the
neighbours never knew, but the Princess gave them to understand that
they would be surprised if she told them. It was her vanity to pretend
that the woman was a society leader, as she called her, but the boys
around the poker-dive knew that Red Martin's days as a heart-breaker
were gone. For what whisky and cocaine and absinthe could do for Red to
hurry his end they were doing, but a man is a strong beast, and it takes
many years to kill him. Also, the Lord saves men like Red for horrible
examples, letting them live long that He may not have to waste others;
but women seem to have God's pity and He takes them out of their misery
more quickly than He takes men. With the coming of the seventh baby the
Princess died. When the news came to the office that she was gone we
were not sorry, for life had held little for her. Her looks were gone;
her health was gone; her dreams were smudged out--pitiful and wretched
and sordid as they were, even at the best. Yet for all that George
Kirwin took down to the funeral a wreath which the office force bought
for her.

To know George Kirwin casually one would say he never saw anything but
the types and machinery in the back room of our office. When he went
among strangers he seemed to be looking always at his hands or studying
his knees, and his responses to those whom he did not know were "yea,
yea," and "nay, nay"; but that night he told us more about the funeral
of the Princess than all the reporters on the paper would have learned.
He told us how the pitiful little parlour with its advertising chromos
and its soap-prize lamp was filled with the women who always come to
funerals in our town--funerals being their only diversion; how they sat
in the undertaker's chairs with their handkerchiefs carefully folded and
in their hands during the first part of the service, waiting for Brother
Hopper to tell about his mother's death, which he never fails to do at
funerals, though the elders have spoken to him about it, as all the town
knows; how Red Martin, shaved for the occasion, and, in a borrowed suit
of clothes, stood out by the well and did not come into the house during
the services; how only the elde