"There was not a spark of fire nor a crumb of food about the place. When Mrs. Floyd opened the basket and the children saw what it contained, they bounded toward it like wolves, and the woman reached out her thin hand and said, eagerly: 'Give me some quick! I'm nearly starved, and the baby is so weak—my breasts are dry.'
"I took off my glove and felt her hand, and I really thought she must be frozen; but she said she had been that way so much she was growing used to it.
"We stopped on our way home and ordered some coal, and later made a raid on our closets and pantry and made up a load of stuff to take back. I sent some good blankets and quite an assortment of clothing, so that by night they were fairly comfortable.
"I went again the next day to see how they were getting along and to give them news of Maggie, and while I was there the father came home for the first time. He was over his spell of intoxication, but was weak, and tottered like an old man. His eyes were bloodshot, and on the whole he was not a very prepossessing looking gentleman, but I could not help feeling sorry for him. It seemed so sad to see a being, created in the image of God, such a miserable wreck.
"Casting his eye hurriedly around the room, he went to the bedside and asked for Maggie. His wife told him how she had gone for him, how she fell, and the rest of the story, and then he told his tale, and—can you believe it, father—that man kicked the girl out of the door—kicked his own daughter down the steps into the storm that night, and gave her the injury from which she lies here under our roof now.
"My blood boiled, fairly boiled. I could feel it bubbling. His wife turned her face to the tiny baby, and I could see her frame shake under the cover. The man knelt beside the bed and wept, too, and again I was sorry, with a sort of contempt mixed in, for the man.
"After a time his wife turned to him, and, resting her thin hand on his head, spoke kindly to him, and referred him to the Lord for the strength that he so sorely lacked. The man did pray, and I am sure he was in earnest; and he asked his wife's forgiveness and took a solemn oath that he would never touch another cursed drop."
"Good," ejaculated the judge.
"Good?" echoed Jean. "Wait, I have not finished yet. I went there several times. I liked to go. It made me happy to see the look that was coming into the woman's eyes. She took two half-dollar pieces from under the pillow one morning, and proudly displayed them, telling me it was the first time in a year her husband had given her so much. She said she had hoped in vain, so many times, for him to reform that she had given up hope, but that now she really believed poor Maggie's misfortune would prove their blessing. They have not always been poor. Once, when they were younger, they owned a nice home and the husband occupied a good position. But he chose for his associates men who spent a good part of their time in a certain fashionable downtown saloon, and to be social he drank with them. He was not a man who could drink a great deal and not become intoxicated, so, when he began to lie around drunk, they pushed him out.
"Mrs. Crowley says the starting point of all their poverty and sorrow and shame was on the threshold of the respectable gilt and glass palace that bears over its doors the names of Allison, Russell & Joy. She knows the place well. I think those gentlemen would not be pleased to hear the things she says of them; for certain it is her husband would never have been a drunkard if it had been necessary for him to have learned the habit in a low grog shop."