“I did not do that; it was the drink did it,” she tearfully pleaded. “He said I would never be better till the grave closed over me. You heard him say so at the trial. But I think there’s a chance for me yet. It’s a dreadful struggle to keep away from drink, but I win the battle sometimes. No one knows what I have fought against; and I’m so poor, and despised, and wretched now that nobody cares to ask. If I were a black savage in a far off country, they’d send missionaries to me and give me every comfort and help; but I’m only a white savage living in Scotland; and I tell you I’m _not_ mistaken about seeing my man. I could not be mistaken. I saw him alive and well in that carriage as sure as there’s a God in heaven.” “How could a poor factory worker like him rise to such a position?” I incredulously remarked. “I don’t know, but there he was sitting by the lady’s side and looking as happy as he used to look when he was courting me; and he saw me too, and turned as white as death at the sight. Perhaps he thought I should die in prison for want of drink, and so married again without waiting to see. I thought of going to his mother’s and asking if he was really dead; but then I changed my mind, and came here. It would be better for you to go; you know better how to get at the truth.” “You charge him with deserting you and marrying another woman?” I said, scarcely able to restrain myself. To this she replied with a wavering affirmative, and then she produced the certificates of her marriage and of the birth of her child, and gave me the address of her mother-in law. She then described minutely the place and circumstances of the meeting with her husband’s counterpart, and left the Office. She left her own address also, but I had no expectation of ever needing that. It seemed to me that the supposed fraud, forgery, and bigamy were entirely the offspring of her own drink-sodden brain, and that to ascertain that her husband was dead and buried would be so simple a matter that there was not the slightest occasion for her putting the task upon us. Still I remember thinking—“If the man is really alive, I hope he will really be nimble enough to escape me. It would be an actual blessing to such a man if the jade fell downstairs and broke her neck.”