"Soon a beautiful thing happened. I have told you of the melancholy end of the cashier of one of our local banks. Well, in time his wife followed him to the cemetery. She was a distant relative of Sam's wife, an' a friend of Lizzie. We found easy employment for the older children, an' Lizzie induced her parents to adopt two that were just out of their mother's arms—a girl of one an' a boy of three years. I suggested to Lizzie that it seemed to me a serious undertaking, but she felt that she ought to be awfully good by way of atonement for the folly of her past life. It was near the end of the year, an' I happen to know that when Christmas came a little sack containing five hundred dollars in gold was delivered at Sam Henshaw's door for Lizzie from a source unknown to her. That paid for the nurse, an' eased the situation."
V
IN WHICH LIZZIE EXERTS AN INFLUENCE ON THE AFFAIRS OF THE RICH AND GREAT
A year after Socrates Potter had told of the descent of Lizzie, and the successful beginning of her new life, I called again at his office.
"How is Pointview?" I asked.
"Did ye ever learn how it happened to be called Pointview?" he inquired.
"No."
"Well, it began with a little tavern with a tap-room called the Pointview House, a great many years ago. Travellers used to stop an' look around for the Point, an', of course, they couldn't see it, for there's none here; at least, no point of land. They'd go in an' order drinks an' say:
"'Landlord, where's the point?'
"An' the landlord would say: 'Well, boys, if you ain't in a hurry you'll probably see it purty soon.'