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WITCH'S GOLD.

By Ellia W Peattie

A Story in Three Parts

Part II.

Mrs. Romeld was not particularly surprised when her husband reephoned that he would not be able to come home to dinner. She didn't even take the trouble to admit herself that it might be something else than business that kept him. What was the use? Sespicion makes such ugly lines in a woman's face!

It's a great comfort to have the latest novels at hand under such circumstance-curcimstances of the sort whose bitterness lies largely in the fact that you dare not even recoginze the existence of the trouble that harasses you. By getting drunk on mimic woes one manages to forget the actual ones. Mrs. Romeld, who, in her way, was something of a philosopher, selected her novel and read till dinner was served. Then she ate heartly and ordered her carriage for 7. She didn't know where she was going. She was acquainted with every inch of the bolevards. She could have told you where each tree stood along the drives of the parks.And it was preposterouse, anyway, for a woman to go out driving at 7, in midsummer, and alone. If the househad not been so intolerably quiet, she would never have done it. Sometimes, as this hour, she wondered who it would seem to have a aittle child to cary ip the stairs in one's arms, and put to bed. She thought of it this night, and paused, as she went out of her little upstairs sitting room, to imagine how that farthest corner would look with a cradle in it. But if the thought awoke a tenderness in her face, it was gone when she remebered her loneliness, and the business that so frequently kept her husband from spending an evening with her, and she walked down the states with the look of calm and seet hauteur which was habitual to her.

The carriage seemed unusually luxrious. She sank back in it, and rested her hands in her lap, letting the cool evening air soothe her body. But after they had ridden a few blocks along the avenue, she gave the coachman an order that made him froget himself so far as to stare at her for a moment. It was only for a moment or less. Then he turned his horses' heads in another direction, and in twenty minutes they were driving along North Market stree.

It's an odd thing, but LaSalle street, on the north side of Chicago, divdes the proietariet from the aristocrat, as sharply as the mandate of a [c?ar] had put a wall around the ghetto. Claribel looked at the houses tht lined the street with intense curiosity. They were comforable, in a way and moder, and perhaps even convenient. They seemed generally to be clean. But there was something about the aspect of them, and of the way the somen sat on the steps, and the children swarmed, and the men sat about in their shirt sleeves, that suggested tool, and its environment in a way that it had never been suggested before to this woman. The night was growing very sultry, and evil smells came up from the sewers, and from the garbage boxes, and the green grocery stoire. The flies buxzed tumutusly about the meat makers- the cries of the children rent the air- and the dinon the street was incessant. All the [es???] stood open, and a hot flare of light came out from them. There was a dog fight on the block , and some boys playing at flaticuffs in another an calling each other indecent names.

The women looked hot and irritable-except the young ones who walked up and down the city street as if it were a shady lane, with their arms locked, making much ado with their conversation, and laughing a great deal. Their dresses were apt to be too short in the skirt, or a trifle too low in the neck. There was a sort of innocent suggestiveness about them-a passionate aspiration toward beauty, checked and defeated in the very nature but the men who sat on the door steps and the girls took these remarks as their natural right, and seemed pleased, and passed on still laughing and embracing each other.

Among these groups of lounging girls Mrs. Romeld saw one woman walking with a quick and nervouse step. The poise of the head looked familiar. And a moment later as the woman walked under the elctric glove, her white hair showed her to be "86" She turned into a drug store, and Claribel Romeld signaled the driver of her carriage to let her out. A sense of impending pain choked her, but she went bravely forward though perhaps it was one of the most disafreeable things she had ever forced herself to do in her life- and laid her hand on team of " 56"

" Is some member of your family [??]?" she asked. Your remember me, of course"

"Yes I remember you, Mrs. Romeld. My sister is ill, thank you."

"Not seriously so, I"

"She is dying."

"85" looked at the woman before her as she had done once before that day.

"Then," said Mrs. Romeld gently, "you must let me go home with you."

" You cannot do any good. It would worry my sister. We have only one room. She would be excited if she saw you. The pleasure it would give you would not make up for the harm it would do to her.

"The pleasure it would give me"

"Yes, It gives a womn like pleasure to think that she is being kind-that she is visiting the slume and putting her white hand on the forehead of a dying woman."

"That is a very strage thing to say to me!"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't feel like apologizing. You have so many pleasures, that you can fet slong without this one. It is very pretty to place at being a benefactor, but I should have to pay too high a price for your pleasure that time. You see, we-sister and I- have paid for so many of your plesures."

The prescription had been filled, and the druggeist handed "86" her bottle of medicine. She paid for it an dnodded good night to Mrs. Romeid. Claribel stepped before her iwth an air of positiveness which astonished "86."

"I am going to drive you home," she said in a commanding way, "I am going to see your sister. I am going to knowjust what you mean. If I am to be accused of wrong doing I will find out the nature of it. I do not propse to be robbed of my slef-respect at your mere say so. You ought to let me defend myself.

"86" stopped and smiled, a slow and beautiful smile. A light came into her gray eyes.

"Well" she exclaimed, "I never expected this. Come on then. I will ride in your carriage, and you shall have the pleasure of being benevoient may sister. You shall know why I accuse you, and what I accuse you of."

WITCH'S GOLD.

By Ellia W Peattie

A Story in Three Parts