and spoke to him in a low tone and retreated as she spoke.  Andy heard him, with a sharp, jealous doubt in his heart, and stood still.  Then the man reached for the envelope in the girl’s hand and said, “Give it to me, do you hear?” and she drew back and started to run, but he seized her arm.  Then Andy jumped at him and knocked him down, and picked him up again by the collar and beat him over the head.  “Stop!” the girl cried.  “Stop!”

“Stop like—­,” said Andy.

“Stop! do you hear?” cried the woman again “He has a right to the money.  He is my husband.”

Andy asked to be taken off theatre duty, and the captain did what he asked.  After that he grew very morose and unhappy, and was as cross and disagreeable as he could be; so that the other men said they would like to thrash him just once.  But when there was a fire he acted like another man, and was so reckless that the captain, mistaking foolhardiness for bravery, handed in his name for promotion, and as his political backing was very strong, he was given the white helmet and became foreman of another engine-house.  But he did not seem to enjoy life any the more, and he was most unpopular.  The winter passed away and the summer came, and one day on Fifth Avenue Andy met old man Sanders, whom he tried to avoid, because the recollections he brought up were bitter ones; but Sanders buttonholed him and told him he had been reading about his getting the Bennett medal, and insisted on his taking a drink with him.

“And, by the way,” said Sanders, just as Andy thought he had finally succeeded in shaking him off, “do you remember Agnes Carroll?  It seems she was married to a drunken, good-for-nothing lout, who beat her.  Well, he took a glass too much one night, and walked off a ferry-boat into the East River.  Drink is a terrible thing, isn’t it?  They say the paddle-wheels knocked the—­”

“And his wife?” gasped Andy.

“She’s with us yet,” said Sanders.  “We’re at the Bijou this week.  Come in and see the piece.”

Brady, the stage manager, waved a letter at the acting manager.

“Letter from Carroll,” he said.  “Sends in her notice.  Going to leave the stage, she says; going to get married again.  She was a good girl,” he added with a sigh, “and she sang well enough, but she couldn’t do the dance steps a little bit.”

A LEANDER OF THE EAST RIVER

“Hefty” Burke was one of the best swimmers in the East River.  There was no regular way open for him to prove this, as the gentlemen of the Harlem boat-clubs, under whose auspices the annual races were given, called him a professional, and would not swim against him.  “They won’t keep company with me on land,” Hefty complained, bitterly, “and they can’t keep company with me in the water; so I lose both ways.”  Young Burke held these gentlemen of the rowing clubs in great contempt, and their outriggers and low-necked and