The forlorn individual whom Peter Dieman saw through his spyhole, during his soul stirring conversation with the stranger, was Kate Barton, the wife of Billy Barton, the waterman, and the ragged but chunky young woman with her was her daughter, Star Barton. They had come into Peter's place to redeem, if possible, or to take away as a gift of charity, if lucky, a few battered and broken kitchen utensils that Billy Barton had sold during one of his thirsty spells while staggering through a vaporless period of inebriacy. Kate Barton's outlook on life was hopeless. She came into the world as poor as the proverbial church mouse, and seemed doomed to go out of it even poorer. She married Billy Barton, a shiftless young man, with an inherent predilection for hankering after the flowing bowl, and ere she had passed a score of years of wedded life twelve innocent starvelings had opened their eyes to her as their mother to gravitate for themselves around the "old block." The poor woman! She was a meek victim of the direst kind of circumstances that could possibly surround a human being. She was one of those submissive and inept mortals that blindly plod the road of domesticity without a spark of the beautiful to light up the narrow channel of unrequitted effort. When she married Billy Barton, she went about it with that fatality of purpose as is usual with her class, and bore her burdens with the equanimity of a horse hitched to a loaded cart on the uphill pull, without a thought for anything beyond her daily tribulations, save that vague idea that the good Lord would take care of her in the after while. She had no ambition further than the difficult task of caring for her home with its limited accommodations and plethoric adornment of young life. The unworthy addition of an imbibing husband, on whom she looked as an inalienable part of her existence, did in no sense tend her thoughts to any less love for him than if he had been a more renowned character among men. Poor, helpless woman! When Peter Dieman saw her that day through his place of outlook, he saw a woman as lean as a bean pole, as tall as a rail splitter, as cadaverous as a ghost, with a hook nose, deeply sunken gray eyes, a complexion that was a cross between yellow and black, brown stringy hair and toothless mouth. Her dress was of faded black alpaca, her shoes coarse and well worn, with a dirty yellow shawl hooded over her head and hanging with frayed edges over her shoulders. After the stranger had left him, Peter stood a few moments, blinkingly observing her. He then stepped out of his office into the less dingy shop. He lumbered up to where she stood having an altercation with Eli Jerey. "Well, Mrs. Barton," he said, rubbing his hands as if very cold, and grinning like a cheshire cat; "can't you and Eli come to terms? What is the trouble?" "Eli Jerey says I cannot redeem my goods without I pay a profit for your trouble," she answered. "Can't have what?" he quizzed.