The only other person (outside of her customers) who kept so much as a speaking acquaintance with Margaret was the sheriff, Amos Wickliff. And what he knew of her he was able to keep even from the press. As for the customers, her malicious nickname explains her business. Margaret was an irregular money-lender. She loaned money for short periods on personal security or otherwise. It should speak well for her shrewdness that she rarely made a bad debt. Yet she was not unpopular; on the contrary, she had the name of giving the poor a long day, and, for one of her trade, was esteemed lenient. Shortly after her accident, also (she had the ill-hap to fall down her cellar-way, injuring her spine), she had remitted a number of debts to her poorest debtors. The accident occurred of a Wednesday morning; Wednesday afternoon her nephew called on her, having, he said, but just discovered her whereabouts. The reporters discovered that this nephew, Archibald Cary Allerton by name, was not an invited and far from a welcome guest, although he gave out that his mother and he were his aunt’s sole living kindred. She would not speak to him when he visited her, turning her head to the wall, moaning and muttering, so that it was but kindness to leave her. The nurse (Mrs. Raker, the jailer’s wife, had come up from the jail) said that he seemed distressed. He called again during the evening, after Wickliff, who spent most of the evening with her alone, was gone, but he had no better success; she would not or could not speak to him. Thursday morning she saw Amos Wickliff. She seemed brighter, and gave Amos, in the presence of the nurse, the notes and mortgages that she desired released. Thursday evening, about eight o’clock, Amos returned to report how he had done his commissions. He found the house flaming from roof-tree to sills! There was no question of his saving the sick woman. Even as he panted up the hill-side the roof fell in with a crash. Amos screamed to the crowd: “Where is she? Did you save her?” And the Irish char-woman’s wail answered him: “I wint in—I wint in whin it was all afire, and the fire jumped at me, so I run; me eyebrows is gone, and I didn’t see a sign of her!” Then Amos betook himself to Mrs. Raker, whom he found only after much searching; nor did her story reassure him. She was violently agitated between pity and shock, but, as usual, she kept her head on her shoulders and her wits on duty. She was not in the house when the catastrophe had happened. Allerton had come to see his aunt. He told the nurse that she might go to her sister, her sister’s child being ill, and that he would stay with his aunt. Wickliff was expected every moment. And the patient had added her word, “Do go, Mrs. Raker; it’s only a step; and take a jar of my plum jelly to Sammy to take his medicine in!” So Mrs. Raker went. She saw the fire first, and that not half an hour from the time she left the house. She saw it flickering in the lower windows. It