In a case so much more serious than a mere case of intoxication as Silo’s was supposed to be, you can readily understand that the scandal of the pink pants spread through the town like wildfire. Silo had already resigned from the vestry, so all the vestry could do was to pitch in and see that he did not get the ghost of a show as a candidate for assembly. It was not much of a job, under the circumstances, and the vestry did it very easily. * * * * * “Well, but what _had_ Silo done?” I asked the Doctor. “And what were the pink pants, anyway?” “Silo hadn’t done a thing,” replied the Doctor. “Not a blessed thing--except to tell a tiny little bit of a two-for-one-cent fib about that hank of worsted. I met Mr. Thingumajig in Chicago last year, and he told me how he worked the whole scheme. The gist of the invention lay in the ‘pink pants.’ Any fool can put up a job to make a man’s wife jealous; but it takes the genius of deathless malevolence to invent a phrase sure to catch every ear that hears it; sure to interest and puzzle and excite every mind that gives it lodgment, and to tie that phrase up to an individuality in such a way that it conveys an accusation almost without form and void, and yet hideously suggestive of iniquity. “That is just what the little newspaper cuss did with Silo. He was bent on revenge, and he gave up a certain portion of his time to shadowing him. You must remember that, while he had reason to remember Silo, Silo had hardly any to remember him. Well, he told me that he dogged Silo for days--months, even--trying to catch him in some wrong-doing. But Silo, big and blustering as he looked, with his whiskers and his knowing air, was an innocent, respectable, henpecked ass. Outside of business, all that he ever did in New York was to go to his mother-in-law’s house at his wife’s bidding to execute shopping commissions and the like. For instance, this hank of Berlin wool the old lady had bought for her daughter; the shade was wrong, and the daughter sent it back. Mr. Thingumajig--never mind his name now--had been tracking Silo on his trips to Fourteenth Street for weeks, and had just learned their innocent nature. His soul was full of rage. He got into a green car with Silo, going to the ferry. The evening was hot. Silo dozed in the corner of the car. The hank of red Berlin wool lay on the seat beside him. Mr. Thingumajig saw it, and saw the letter pinned to it, addressed by Mrs. Silo to her mother. In that instant he conceived the crude basis of his plot--to appropriate the hank, suppress the letter, souse the wool with cheap perfume, get his wife to readdress the parcel in her worst hand--and to rely in pretty good confidence on Silo’s telling a lie at one end or both ends of the line about the missing wool. Silo was not much of a sinner, but a man who loses his wife’s hank of Berlin wool and goes home and owns up about it is a good deal of a saint. The chances were all in Mr.