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 round and sticking it out in that close-mouthed way, I've half a mind to give him a good shaking!"

"I wish you would!" Henry Bennett would answer, with suppressed amusement, "I should jest like to see you!"

The idea of her husband's making a joke at her expense would not have found easy entrance into Jane Bennett's mind. She never dreamed that, as he made this harmless remark, he was conjuring up a picture of the scene. She was a small woman, to be sure, and her son, in those early days, was a tall, muscular man. But so strong was her sense of maternal authority that no exercise of it seemed incongruous. Had she suspected that her mild-visaged husband, whom she had always domineered over, and consequently looked down upon, knew the whole story of his son's misadventure, her indignation would have known no bounds. It was well for the peace of all concerned that no such suspicion ever crossed her mind.

Meanwhile a quarter of a century had passed over Jane Bennett, and the disappointment of her life. Kind deprecatory Henry Bennett, had long since received his last conjugal snub, had long since had his last sly chuckle at his wife's expense, and very quietly, as was his nature, he had slipped out of the matrimonial bonds, by the only loophole of escape open to such as he.

At the end of that quarter of a century, Jane