A town’s mind is a child’s mind and it readily sympathized with the struggle that the Nieson girl was making in her poor blind handicapped way to climb out of the environment which she had always known, and make something of herself. Then suddenly one day Jack Fuller sold his racy automobile. He and Betty were married and they furnished a modest home on Pleasant Street. One-half of the town said it was because Jack had gone through his inheritance. The other half said that it was his wife’s influence over him. Certainly to all appearances the girl was making a desperate and commendable struggle not only to raise herself up but to compel Jack to be a man. Then the half of the home-folks which had claimed the way Jack squandered his money had been at the bottom of his marriage, were apparently in the right. For shortly after the pitiful little marriage the boy was seen frequenting the Whitney House bar as much as ever. Now came this additional sorrow into the girl’s life. She had married the lad trying to get away from the hereditary taint of the Nieson blood. It had come to her now that there appeared to be a taint also in the Fuller blood. She had lost her baby. The Hods said that there was a light burning in the Fuller tenement all that night. The baby was buried the next day. It was a pathetic little funeral, just a prayer or two by Doctor Dodd of the Methodist Church, and then Blake Whipple, the undertaker, took care of the interment. The evening of the day that the poor little shaver was laid underground, Mrs. Hod entered the tenement to console the bereaved girl. She entered without knocking. She paused at the threshold, made rigid by the sight before her. For Jack Fuller was down on his knees before the girl he had married. His finely-shaped head was buried in her lap. He was sobbing freakishly, for men do not know how to weep. And the girl seated there on the sofa was staring into unseeing space with a holy look upon her beautifully plain face; her slender shapely fingers toying with the boy’s wavy hair. “Never, never, never—will I touch a drop of the stuff as long as I live, Betty,” he choked between his tears. “I don’t care—what the provocation is—I won’t ever do it. I’ve been a cad, Betty. I haven’t been a Fuller at all—but I’ll show you I can be. I’ll make up for this. We’ve lost the baby, Betty—but it’s brought me to my senses. I’m—done! I swear it before God, Betty. I’m—done!” The girl never knew a neighbor was looking on, unable to withdraw without disclosing her presence.