Of all who marched with the banners of the Red Stocking Blondes, Mr. Pepin, when they came into Dodge, was the only one troubled of spirit. The rest showed as gay as larks; for the troupe was on the road to Broadway, and six weeks more would find its members in Rector’s, Shanley’s, Brown’s and Lüchow’s, relating their adventures to guileless ones who had never crossed the Hudson. It was that thought of Broadway to pale the sallow, anxious cheek of Mr. Pepin. And the reason of the terror which tugged at his soul was this: Two years rearward Mr. Pepin, by several fortunate strokes and the aid of a legacy, had made himself master of an opera company. It was one of those terrible opera companies that sing Wagner and are both fashionable and awful to hear. The contralto of the opera company was a large, powerful woman whose name ended in “ski.” Her upper lip was distinctly mustached, and her voice sounded like a man in a cistern. There are, in divers parts of Europe, just such beings as this contralto who, yoked with cattle, assist in agriculture by pulling plows. This happy condition, however, is confined to Europe; here they sing in Wagner. Any lady of the theaters will tell you there is advantage in being the wife of the owner of the show. It means spotlights, music, three-sheets, puffs; in short the center of the stage. The contralto in question was wholly aware of these advantages. Acting on that knowledge, this formidable woman arose one New York morning, conveyed Mr. Pepin to the Little Church Around the Corner, almost with force and arms, and married him to her for better or for worse. It turned out to be the latter alternative in the dismal case of Mr. Pepin. There came a time when the opera company fell upon poor days. Then the days went from poor to bad and bad to worse. Lastly, came the crash. At the close of a losing week the treasurer fled with the receipts, and a host of creditors, the sheriff at their hungry head, tore Mr. Pepin into insolvent bits. When the dust of that last fierce struggle had subsided, Mr. Pepin crawled from the wreck with two fiddles and the necessity of beginning life anew. Mr. Pepin, at that time, would have said that he had nothing further to fear from fate. Ill-fortune, he would have argued, had shot its bolt and done its worst. Most folk, after an unbiased review, would have coincided with Mr. Pepin. Also, most folk, like Mr. Pepin, would be wrong, since they would have overlooked that fell contralto. When the opera company went to grief, and with it her position, the contralto scrupled not to revile Mr. Pepin. She even taunted him with his misshapen back. Then she beat him. When he ran from her and concealed himself, she charged him with abandonment and cruelty, and the police dragged Mr. Pepin from his place of hiding.