In the days when he had been a neighbor of the Lawtons, over in the picturesque Orange Mountains, he had had a wife, or, to be more exact, there had been a Mrs. Bulkley, since for many years she had been nothing more to him than an unsalaried housekeeper. His contemptuous indifference as to her knowledge of his infamies deprived her even of the cloak of pretended ignorance with which many a betrayed wife hides her wounded pride and self-respect. So, from a rosy, cheery, happy wife, she had been changed into a pale and silent housekeeper. Sometimes a certain alleviating friendship exists between a wife and her disloyal husband, but not in this case; for without sympathy there can be no friendship, and there was not a particle of sympathy between the dutiful, pure-minded, humiliated Anna Bulkley and the lax, self-loving, and carnal William H. Bulkley. So she had folded her lips closely to hide their tendency to tremble, and had borne her lot silently, growing a little paler, a little thinner, a little more retiring year by year, until there came that hottest morning of a long, hot stretch of weather when she failed to descend to breakfast, and her husband had angrily rapped upon her door, declaring that because he wished to go to the city early that day he supposed she meant to sleep forever, and was surprised to find his supposition was an absolutely correct one, for she slept forever. "Heart failure," said the hastily summoned doctor, and doubtless he accurately stated the immediate cause of death, but there were certain women among these lovely country homes who felt sure that the fatal weakness was neither recent nor caused by the summer heat; who believed the poor wife's heart failure dated from the time her husband abandoned home for harem, and by the publicity of his infidelities had made her an object of contemptuous pity. Therefore cold and unfriendly were the glances they cast upon the black-clothed, crêpe-bound widower in their midst. Now, looking back to that time, he recalled his dead wife's fondness for the little ones of her neighbor's--the bon-bons she always kept at hand, the swing she had put up for her childish visitors' amusement, and the accident, one day, when the rope broke, and--yes, these very children of Lawton's were the ones that fell; and then quite suddenly he seemed to hear his wife's voice, crying: "Oh, Dorrie, Sibbie, are you hurt?" With a triumphant laugh he struck his hands together, exclaiming: "I've found them! I've got their names at last! Now, if I can find the girls again in this confounded crowd, I'll have fair sailing!"