Mrs. Martin once told a capital story of the Amish. This sect has a rule that any one who breaks a law of the meeting shall be penalized by living apart from his wife or, in the case of a woman, her husband; denied even the solace of recrimination. The wife of a particularly stingy member of the sect devised a cunning punishment for him by herself breaking one of the laws of the meeting. “I don’t know what rule she broke,” Mrs. Martin said. “It may have been sewing a button on her dress instead of a hook and eye, or she may have advocated painting the house. In any event her husband became an outcast, unable even to speak to his wife. “I used the instance, somewhat colored, in a story. The result was that I got a letter from an Amish preacher informing me that if I would give him the name of the man who was so stingy to his wife the church would punish him properly. Of course I replied that the instance was purely fictitious. To which the reply of the minister was that he could not understand why I wrote such lies about the sect!” Introducing Mrs. Martin, a bright, cheerful, little bit of a woman, at a booksellers’ convention in New York, William Hard declared that she and Margaret Deland were like two large railroad systems each operating exclusively in its own territory by a tacit understanding. Mrs. Martin, to accept the simile, freights great quantities of valuable stuff and yields far better dividends than some of the big transcontinental lines! BOOKS BY HELEN R. MARTIN _Elusive Hildegarde._ _Her Husband’s Purse._ _His Courtship._ _Warren Hyde._ _Tillie, a Mennonite Maid_, 1904. _Sabina, a Story of the Amish_, 1905. _The Betrothal of Elypholate and Other Tales of the Pennsylvania Dutch_, 1907. _The Revolt of Anne Royle_, 1908. _The Crossways_, 1910. _When Half-Gods Go_, 1911. _The Fighting Doctor_, 1912. _The Parasite_, 1913. _Barnabetta_, 1914. _For a Mess of Pottage_, 1915. _Martha of the Mennonite Country_, 1915. _Those Fitzenbergers_, 1917. _Gertie Swartz: Fanatic or Christian?_ 1918. _Maggie of Virginsburg_, 1918. _The Schoolmaster of Hessville_, 1920. _The Marriage of Susan_, 1921. _Mrs. Martin’s books are published by Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, and the Century Company, New York._ CHAPTER XVIII SOPHIE KERR “July 19, 1918. “My dear Mr. Overton: “It has been almost impossible for me to write this. I have made a dozen beginnings and invariably found myself drifting off into reminiscences of my childhood and funny lies about what I think and feel. Good heavens! what do I think and feel? I don’t know. I really don’t. I have never had the time nor found myself of sufficient interest to sit down and think about myself subjectively. I am afraid that this is a very queer narrative and very dull, but at least I have tried to give only facts....