hideous with life-sized crayon portraits. Chenille curtains were draped at the windows and a rope portière impeded the opening and closing of the door. A large marble-topped table stood in the center of the room. It was all hideous enough even if the odor of camphor and moth balls had not been in the air. It was an awful example of clinging to customs which are hideous.

Eliza never could sit there. She always felt irritated and fussy whenever she put it to rights, but yet she had not reached the stage of advancement which seeks the cause and removes it.

Bracing herself against the jamb of the door, she raised her aching, bruised hand and pushed aside the rope drapery. The center-table with its marble top had been removed from its accustomed place and something else was there.

Eliza stood for a moment to look about her. Squire Stout stood by, leaning on his cane. He was a little shriveled-up creature with snowy hair. His lips were thin and cruel. There was the air of an autocrat, a demagogue about him. Near him was Doctor Dullmer, whose face even now had lost nothing of its helpful, cheery, optimistic expression. There were other men in the group. They had all been talking; but they ceased at the sight of Miss Eliza standing in the doorway.

“You?” exclaimed Doctor Dullmer, advancing and extending his arm for support. “What do you mean? You should be in bed!”

“I am all right. Just bruised. That is all.”

She clung to his arm as she moved toward the little group, which separated to make room for her as she advanced.

Then she saw why the center-table with its square marble top had been pushed to the wall The woman lay there. Her beautiful yellow hair was coiled about her head like a golden crown. She looked so smiling and happy that Eliza could not feel one pang of sorrow for her. She bent over and smoothed the stranger’s forehead.

“I wonder who she was,” she said at length.

“Don’t you know?” the question came from every man there and from the group of women who had packed the narrow doorway. They were too fearful and too nervous to enter.

“No, I do not,” said Eliza. “I know neither her name nor her destination.”

“Sit down,” said Doctor Dullmer brusquely, pushing forward a chair and forcing her, none too gently, into it. She sat 

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