Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/277

 "It was marked," he said, "and sent to me through the mail."

Opening it, he showed her the desecration of his most admired editorial. It was a fragment of the local newspaper, stained and torn, which read, ". . . sacred rights of property must be protected against the attacks of men little better than brutes, etc., etc.," and signed in large black letters MOSES SLADE. On the face of the printing some irreverent hand had made a series of drawings in pencil—a Croat woman feeding her three small children with coffee out of a clumsy tin cup, a gigantic, bearded Slovak and his wizened, tubercular wife, a baby wrapped in the remains of a ragged pair of overalls, a thin, shivering girl with the face of a Madonna. The whole had been photographed and reproduced.

Underneath them was a line which read, "These are the brutes of the Honorable Moses Slade who have endangered our most sacred institutions and destroyed our God-given prosperity." And beside it was a caricature of Slade himself, gross, overdressed, with flowing locks and a leering expression, beneath which was written: "Puzzle—find the beast on these two pages."

He banged the table with his hamlike fist. "By God, I'll find out who did it, and make him pay for his impudence! I'm not a force in this Town for nothing!"

Emma turned faintly pale, but she only said, "It's shameful, I think, Moses, but what can you expect from such people? They have no respect for our institutions . . . our excellent Congressmen."

But she knew well enough who had made the drawing.