Page:Ten Nights in a Bar room.pdf/124

120 frightened face, nor her cry of fear. Simon—if she should die!"

There was a long silence.

"If we were only back to the mill." It was Mrs. Slade's voice.

"There, now! I don't want to hear that again," quickly spoke out the landlord. "I made a slave of myself long enough."

"You had at least a clear conscience," his wife answered.

"Do hush, will you?" Slade was now angry. "One would think, by the way you talk sometimes, that I had broken every command of the Decalogue."

"You will break hearts as well as commandments, if you keep on for a few years as you have begun—and ruin souls as well as fortunes."

Mrs. Slade spoke calmly, but with marked severity of tone. Her husband answered with an oath, and then left the room, banging the door after him. In the hush that followed I retired to my chamber, and lay for an hour