trouble and excitement, and had made her go to bed. He had kissed her and cried over her, and, of course, made her cry. Late at night she was aroused by feeling him again at her bedside, kissing her, fondling her, raving over her. He bade her good night and passed into the adjoining room, where she heard him fiercely knocking about. She was very much frightened; she fancied he was out of his mind. She knew that their troubles had lately been thickening fast; now the worst had come. Suddenly he called her. She asked what he wanted, and he bade her get out of bed and come to him. She trembled, but she obeyed. On reaching the threshold of his room she saw the gas turned low, and her father standing in his shirt against the door at the other end. He ordered her to stop where she was. Suddenly she heard a loud report and felt beside her cheek the wind of a bullet. He had aimed at her with a pistol. She retreated in terror to her own bedside and buried her head in the clothes. This, however, did not prevent her from hearing a second report, followed by a deep groan. Venturing back again, she found her father on the floor, bleeding from the face. “He meant to kill her, of course,” said the landlady, “that she mightn’t be left alone in the world. It’s a wonderful mixture of cruelty and kindness!” It seemed to Roger an altogether pitiful tale. He related his own interview with the deceased, and the latter’s menace of suicide. “It gives me,” he said, “a sickening sense of connection with this bloodshed. But how could I help it? All the same, I wish he had taken my ten dollars.” Of the antecedent history of the dead man they could learn little. The child had recognized Lawrence, and had broken out again into a quivering convulsion of tears. Little by little, from among her sobs, they gathered a few facts. Her father had brought her during the preceding month from St. Louis; they had stopped some time in New York. Her father had been for months in great want of money. They had once had money enough; she could not say what had become of it. Her mother had died many months before; she had no other kindred nor friends. Her father may have had friends, but she never saw them. She could indicate no source of possible assistance or sympathy. Roger put the poor little fragments of her story together. The most salient fact among them all was her absolute destitution.