"I know," she repeated as if to some invisible confessor; "I know both sides of it, and, honestly, I don't know which is worse. I know all that can be said, only--sometimes--I wonder----" XIII JAIL-DELIVERY Rose was ill--she had been drinking too much for the past week--and Violet, in her no longer fresh red kimona, was in the kitchen talking to Cassie when, one morning, the new driver of the brewery-wagon stopped at the door. "Morning," he said with what at once struck Violet, who was now constantly on the watch, as a visible effort at nonchalance. Conrad Schultz was a tall, raw-boned German-American, with a long nose and pale, sorrowful mustache, but with an eye in the cerulean depths of which there lurked the cold fire of reliable strategy. "Come in," said Violet, "an' have a drop of something." "Thanks." He came in cumbersomely, and took an uneasy seat. "Some chilly for this season," he remarked, with a cool glance in the direction of the ebony Cassie, hovering glumly in the background. Violet thought she caught the meaning of the man, whom she knew was Hermann Hoffmann's successor. "It is chilly for this time of year," she said. "What will you have? It better be something warming. There's whiskey here, or, if you don't mind waiting till Cassie goes for it, there's some good brandy in the cellar." Schultz appeared to hesitate, and Violet, watching him, could not, for a moment, decide whether there was, after all, any foundation for the hope that his appearance had wakened. "Well, if it ain't no trouble," he at last blurted, "I would like a taste of real brandy." "Cassie," said Violet, "bring up a fresh bottle of brandy for Mr.--Mr.----" "Schultz," prompted that individual. "For Mr. Schultz, Cassie." Cassie, however, seemed to have scented surrounding mystery. "Ah reckon there's a bottle som'ares about yhere, Miss Vi'let," she demurred. "No, there isn't." "But, Miss Vi'let, there was one jes' half empty las' night." "Miss Rose took that to bed with her. Don't talk so much. Go down an' get a fresh bottle for Mr. Schultz." The girl left the room slowly and sullenly. Schultz sat silent and motionless until a moment had followed the closing of the door. Then the cold flame was relighted in his eye. "She called you Miss Violet?" he asked, though still in the most commonplace of tones. "That's my name." "Did you ever talk to the man that had my job before I had it?" Violet, with the catlike quiet and ease that always characterized her movements, stepped to the door through which Cassie had just passed. She flung it quickly open. The black girl nearly fell headlong into the room. Without an instant's hesitation, Violet did the one effective thing. She smacked the negress smartly across the face.