Any who seek a new emotion would ask for nothing more than Craddock's wife then experienced. It was not until the first shock had given away to a calm, stupendous indignation that she began to comment upon the epistle in detail. “May 13th--at that very time Jack was sighing at the thought of my being away from him during the hot weather and telling me how he would miss me. All deception! His heart at that very time was beating for her alone. And he would contrive to see her as often as possible this summer--during my absence!” It was then that Craddock's wife learned the great value of pride and anger as a compound antidote to overwhelming grief in certain circumstances. When Craddock, quite unarmed, rushed to meet her at the seashore upon the next evening, she was en route for Boston. In several ensuing years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that every communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three years and all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house for his wife and himself, in trying to cross her path that he might have a moment's hearing, he came back home and went to the dogs. He would have killed himself had not hope remained--the hope that some chance turn of events would bring him face to face with her, that he might know wherefore his punishment. He would have proudly resolved to forget her, and he would have striven day and night to make a name that some day would reach her ears whereever she might go, had he not felt that some terrible mistake had taken her from him; time would eventually rectify matters. As hope bade him live and as his inability to forget her made it impossible for him to put his thoughts upon work, he became a drunkard. He might not have done so had he been you or I; but he was only Craddock, and whether or not you find his offence beyond the extent of palliation, the fact is that he drank himself penniless and entirely beyond the power of his own will to resume respectability. Naturally his friends abandoned him. “Craddock is making a beast of himself,” said one who had formerly sat at his table. “To give him money merely accelerates the process.” “When a man loses all self-respect, how can he expect to retain the sympathy of other people?” queried a second. “I never thought much of a man who would go to the gutter on account of a woman. It shows a lack of stamina,” observed a third. All of which was true. But particular cases have exceptionally aggravating circumstances. Special combinations may produce results which, although seemingly under human control, are almost, if not quite, inevitable.