As poor, dazed, homeless Alida passed out into the street after the revelation that she was not a wife and never had been, she heard a voice say, "Well, Hanner wasn't long in bouncing the woman.  I guess we'd better go up now.  Ferguson will need a lesson that he won't soon forget."

The speaker of these words was Mrs. Ferguson's brother, William Hackman, and his companion was a detective.  The wife had laid her still sleeping child down on the lounge and was coolly completing Alida's preparations for dinner.  Her husband had sunk back into a chair and again buried his face in his hands.  He looked up with startled, bloodshot eyes as his brother-in-law and the stranger entered, and then resumed his former attitude.

Mrs. Ferguson briefly related what had happened, and then said, "Take chairs and draw up."

"I don't want any dinner," muttered the husband.

Mr. William Hackman now gave way to his irritation.  Turning to his brother, he relieved his mind as follows: "See here, Hank Ferguson, if you hadn't the best wife in the land, this gentleman would now be giving you a promenade to jail.  I've left my work for weeks, and spent a sight of money to see that my sister got her rights, and, by thunder!  she's going to have 'em.  We've agreed to give you a chance to brace up and be a man.  If we find out there isn't any man in you, then you go to prison and hard labor to the full extent of the law.  We've fixed things so you can't play any more tricks.  This man is a private detective.  As long as you do the square thing by your wife and child, you'll be let alone.  If you try to sneak off, you'll be nabbed.  Now, if you aint a scamp down to your heel-taps, get up out of that chair like a man, treat your wife as she deserves for letting you off so easy, and don't make her change her mind by acting as if you, and not her, was the wronged person."

At heart Ferguson was a weak, cowardly, selfish creature, whose chief aim in life was to have things to suit himself.  When they ceased to be agreeable, he was ready for a change, without much regard for the means to his ends.  He had always foreseen the possibility of the event which had now taken place, but, like all self-indulgent natures, had hoped that he might escape detection.

Alida, moreover, had won a far stronger hold upon him than he had once imagined possible.  He was terribly mortified and cast down by the result of his experiment, as he regarded it.  But the thought of a prison and hard labor speedily drew his mind away from this aspect of the affair.  He had been fairly caught, his lark was over, and he soon resolved that the easiest and safest way out of the scrape was the best way.  He therefore raised his head and came forward with a penitent air as he said: "It's natural I should be overwhelmed with shame at the position in which I find myself.  But I see the truth of your words, and I'll try to make it all right as far as I can.  I'll go back with you and Hannah to my old home.  I've got money in the bank, I'll sell out everything here, and I'll pay you, William, as far as I can, what you've spent.  Hannah is mighty good to let me off so easy, and she won't be sorry.  This man is witness to what I say," and the detective nodded.

"Why, Ferguson," said Mr. Hackman effusively, "now you're talking like a man.  Come and kiss him, Hannah, and make it all up."

"That's the way with you men," said the woman bitterly. "These things count for little.  Henry Ferguson must prove he's honest in what he says by deeds, not words.  I'll do as I've said if he acts square, and that's enough to start with."

"All right," said Ferguson, glad enough to escape the caress. "I'll do as I say."

He did do all he promised, and very promptly, too.  He was not capable of believing that a woman wronged as Alida had been would not prosecute him, and he was eager to escape to another state, and, in a certain measure, again to hide his identity under his own actual name.

Meanwhile, how fared the poor creature who had fled, driven forth by her first wild impulse to escape from a false and terrible position?  With every step she took down the dimly lighted street, the abyss into which she had fallen seemed to grow deeper and darker.  She was overwhelmed with the magnitude of her misfortune.  She shunned the illumined thoroughfares with a half-crazed sense that every finger would be pointed at her.  Her final words, spoken to Ferguson, were the last clear promptings of her womanly nature.  After that, everything grew confused, except the impression of remediless disaster and shame.  She was incapable of forming any correct judgment concerning her position.  The thought of her pastor filled her with horror.  He, she thought, would take the same view which the woman had so brutally expressed--that in her eagerness to be married, she had brought to the parsonage an unknown man and had involved a clergyman in her own scandalous record.--It would all be in the papers, and her pastor's name mixed up in the affair.  She would rather die than subject him to such an ordeal.  Long after, when he learned the facts in the case, he looked at her very sadly as he asked: "Didn't you know me better than that?  Had I so failed in my preaching that you couldn't come straight to me?"

She wondered afterward that she had not done this, but she was too morbid, too close upon absolute insanity, to do what was wise and safe.  She simply yielded to the wild impulse to escape, to cower, to hide from every human eye, hastening through the darkest, obscurest streets, not caring where.  In the confusion of her mind she would retrace her steps, and soon was utterly lost, wandering she knew not whither.  As it grew late, casual passers-by looked after her curiously, rough men spoke to her, and others jeered.  She only hastened on, driven by her desperate trouble like the wild, ragged clouds that were flying across the stormy March sky.

At last a policeman said gruffly, "You've passed me twice.  You can't be roaming the streets at this time of night.  Why don't you go home?"

Standing be............