Look! 'Shameful Flight.
Abandons his Wife.

Runs off with a Notorious--'" "Easy, old gal, easy now.

D--n it! Will you dry up?
I say.

STOP!" It was too late! The sheriff had dashed the paper from the woman's hand, but not until Mrs.Tucker had read a single line, a line such as she had sometimes turned from with weary scorn in her careless perusal of the daily shameful chronicle of domestic infelicity.

Then she had coldly wondered if there could be any such men and women; and now! The crowd fell back before her; even the virago was silenced as she looked at her face.
The humorist's face was as white, but not as immobile, as he gasped, "Christ! if I don't believe she knew nothin' of it!" For a moment the full force of such a supposition, with all its poignancy, its dramatic intensity, and its pathos, possessed the crowd.
In the momentary clairvoyance of enthusiasm they caught a glimpse of the truth, and by one of the strange reactions of human passion they only waited for a word of appeal or explanation from her lips to throw themselves at her feet.