The “show” was not over for an hour longer, and his carriage was the last called. The fair manager had detained her lieutenant to exchange felicitations over the triumph of the evening. Susie appeared, finally, running down the steps so fast that her attendant only overtook her at the curbstone. He had come out bareheaded, and without other protection against the bitter March wind than his evening dress and thin shoes. Mrs. Cornell’s hand was on the handle of the carriage door, and he covered it with his own. “Are you cruel or coquettish, sweet Annie Laurie?” he asked in accents thickened by liquor and laughter. By the electric light Arthur saw the pale terror of her face, as she tried to wrest her fingers from the ruffianly grasp. Without a second’s hesitation the husband leaped out through the other door, passed behind the carriage, lifted the man, taller and heavier than himself, by the nape of the neck, and laid him in the gutter. “The fellow is drunk!” he remarked contemptuously to the policeman who hastened up, imagining that the gentleman had tripped and fallen. “It is lucky you are here to look after him.” He handed his trembling wife into the carriage, swung himself in after her, and bade the coachman drive home. Then—for as I have expressly affirmed, this man was heroic in naught save his love for wife and children—he put strong tender arms about the sinking woman, who clung to his neck, convulsed by sobs, as one snatched from destruction might hang upon the saving hand. “There, my darling! It is all over! I ought to have taken better care of you. The old account is closed. We’ll begin another upon a clean page.” He was only a bank cashier, you see, and familiar with no figures except such as he used every day. THE ARTICLES OF SEPARATION. BEFORE and since the day when a certain man—idling while Israel and Syria warred—drew a bow at a venture (the margin has it, “in his simplicity,”) that let a king’s life out, the air has vibrated to the twang of other bowstrings, and millions of barbs, as idly sent, have been dyed with life-blood. In every 50,000 cases of this sort of manslaughter, 49,999 fall by the tongue. The Hon. Simeon Barton, radiating prosperity from every pore of his snug person, and clothed with complacency as with a garment, rolled about the soon-to-be-vacated bachelor quarters of his nephew-namesake, thumbs in armholes, and chin in air, while he discoursed: “You’re a pluckier fellow than your uncle, me boy! Of course, it is on the cards that your head may be level. There are literary women _and_ literary women, no doubt, and this must be a favorable specimen of the tribe, or you wouldn’t have been in your present fix, but none of the lot in mine, if you please. When my turn comes—and I aint sure that I shan’t look out for a match some day, when I am too stiff to trot well in single harness, I shall hold the reins. No inside seat for me.”