“The lithographer’s establishment proved to be very interesting to me. Some excellent work was done there, and some odd jobs of various kinds--even the engraving of spoons sometimes--all of which I learned to do. In fact I learned to do anything and everything there as well as anybody, and before long received a larger salary, though never anything very imposing. I considered the time well spent, however, for I was perfecting myself in drawing, and when out of office studied languages and read much. I was happy--happier than I had ever been in my life, for I was out of the wretchedness that prevailed at home, and was treated with politeness and respect by everybody. “Among the patrons of our establishment with whom I came in contact was Mr. Doring. He made no particular impression on me, until an epidemic came and his three children fell victims to it and died. Then as I heard considerable talk about his sorrow in the office, I tried to express my sympathy when next I saw him. “Nearly a year passed when the community was startled by the announcement that his wife had died suddenly and suspiciously, and he had been arrested as her murderer. As in all such cases, some considered the accusation preposterous, and others believed in it with vindictive energy, and clamored for his punishment. I was indignant at their gross cruelty and expressed my opinion freely--too freely, I was told. He was tried and acquitted, but his acquittal did not set him right in the eyes of many of his townspeople. They talked over the circumstances, magnifying all the suspicious indications and inventing new ones, and they treated him to cuts, contemptuous looks and other expressions of malevolence, until they almost broke him down. You know there are human beings who bitterly resent it when a sensation doesn’t develop into the last phase of the horrible, and of such that town was largely composed. “A few days after his acquittal Doring came into our office and thanked me warmly for my kind expressions of faith in his innocence, of which it seems he had been told. He looked haggard and ill, and at sight of him I felt renewed indignation at the cruelty of man to man, and I said so as earnestly as I could. “About that time I began to notice something queer in the faces of people when they talked about Doring to me. I could not read it clearly, but that it was inimical to me I soon discovered. It was something they pretended to conceal, yet really wanted to make conspicuously noticeable. It was a suspicion of a low order, but what? The man was nothing to me more than any other victim of injustice. What had I to do with him and his sorrowful affairs?