"Good?" echoed Jean. "Wait, I have not finished yet. I went there several times. I liked to go. It made me happy to see the look that was coming into the woman's eyes. She took two half-dollar pieces from under the pillow one morning, and proudly displayed them, telling me it was the first time in a year her husband had given her so much. She said she had hoped in vain, so many times, for him to reform that she had given up hope, but that now she really believed poor Maggie's misfortune would prove their blessing. They have not always been poor. Once, when they were younger, they owned a nice home and the husband occupied a good position. But he chose for his associates men who spent a good part of their time in a certain fashionable downtown saloon, and to be social he drank with them. He was not a man who could drink a great deal and not become intoxicated, so, when he began to lie around drunk, they pushed him out. "Mrs. Crowley says the starting point of all their poverty and sorrow and shame was on the threshold of the respectable gilt and glass palace that bears over its doors the names of Allison, Russell & Joy. She knows the place well. I think those gentlemen would not be pleased to hear the things she says of them; for certain it is her husband would never have been a drunkard if it had been necessary for him to have learned the habit in a low grog shop." Jean paused a second and looked at her father, but he seemed unaware of her gaze, and she continued: "Then I went in to-day to tell them that Maggie would be home in a few days, and I found a change. The girl Cora was on the bed with her mother. The blankets and sheets had disappeared. The few pieces of furniture that the room contained were scattered in disorder. I will try to tell the rest of the story as Mrs. Crowley told it to me. I will never forget, father, the helpless despair that sounded in her voice and manner as she talked. "'Ah, Miss Thorn!' she said, wearily, 'It's all over--all gone. I should have known better than to have hoped again; but hope is so sweet! Yesterday morning my husband seemed more like himself than he has for years. He kissed us when he went away and promised to be home early. We were all very happy. He is such a kind, good man when he is himself. Oh! if only he had never crossed the threshold of that gilded trap of hell. Those men's names burn in my mind. I wonder if such men as Allison, Russell and Joy have hearts.