Therefore they came, starting before daylight in the frosty morning. Carroll was conscious of them all, of the druggist and the postmaster; of the two horsemen with whom he had had a half-settlement, and who were now about to force the remainder; of the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, who had been exceedingly nasty about the rug, and persisted in thinking that the Carrolls were responsible for its disappearance. They had now other chattels in view, and were only delayed from taking prompt measures by the uncertainty as to what belonged to Carroll, or to his wife, or to the owner of the house. There was also lurking around the corner of the station, but quite ready for immediate action should it be necessary, another man, who represented the arm of the local law. There was also Madame Estelle Griggs, and, curiously enough, the sight of that little, meagre-bedecked figure and that small, rasped, piteous face of nervous suspicion affected Carroll more forcibly than did any of the others. He was conscious of a sensation of actual fear as he caught sight of the waving plume, of the wiry frizzes, of the sharp, frost-reddened face, of those watchful, unhappy eyes. He realized that if she should make a scene there, if he should hear again that laugh and those wailing sobs, he could not answer for what he might do. There even flashed across his mind a mental picture of the on-rush of the train, and of a man hurling himself before it, to get for once and all out of sight and sound of the unspeakable, grotesque, unmanning shame of the thing. It was when he saw her that he resolved that he would not put his foot on the train, lest she might think he meant to go. However, she would probably have made no manifestation. She was herself in mortal terror of retribution because of the things which she had confiscated in payment of her debt. She had little of Minna Eddy's strength of confidence in her own proceedings. She had, however, consoled herself by the reflection that possibly nobody knew that she had taken them. She had hidden them away under her mattress, and slept uneasily on the edge of the bed, lest she break the cups and saucers. If it had not been so early in the morning, presumably too early for visitors from the City, she would not have dared show herself at the station. In these days she sewed behind closed doors, with her curtains down. She went to her customer's houses for tryings-on, instead of having her patrons come to her. She was always ready, working with her eyes at the parting of the curtains, to flee down a certain pair of outside back-stairs, and cut across the fields, should men be sent out from the City to collect money. Rosenstein's store was under her little apartment, and she knew she could trust him not to betray her. The dressmaker was in these days fairly tragic in appearance, with a small and undignified, but none the less real, tragedy. It was the despair of a small nature