The newcomer sat in a thoughtful attitude, her elbow on the counter.

“Well?” said the sister Lize.

“You all treat me so funny here I guess I’ll go,” said Mrs. Tredder, who now got up, her face darkening, and hurried away.  They of the plums had both vanished.

“Wretch!” said the sister Lize, hotly; “I could have choked her.”  She squirmed a little, moving her chair roughly.

“She’s forever sticking her nose into other people’s business,” were the words of the customer who was counting beads.  She seemed to be near the point of tears.

“Maybe that’s why it’s so red,” the other answered with unspeakable contempt.  “I’m so mad I can hardly sit still.”

She wound her yarn close and stuck her needle into the ball.

“Thank goodness!” said she, suddenly; “here comes Serene.”

The sister Serene Davis, a frail, fair lady, entered.

“Well,” said the latter, “I suppose you’ve heard—­” she paused to get her breath.

“What?” said the sister Lize, in a whisper, approaching the new arrival.

“My heart is all in a flutter—­don’t hurry me.”

The sister Lize went to the door and closed it.  Then she turned quickly, facing the other woman.

“Serene Davis,” she began solemnly, “you’ll never leave this room alive until you tell us.”

“Can’t you let a body enjoy herself a minute?”

“Tell me,” she insisted, threatening with a needle.

Ruth Tole regarded them with a look of firmness which seemed to say, “Stab her if she doesn’t tell.”

“Well,” said the sister Serene, “you know that stylish young widow that came a while ago to the Moosehead—­the one that wore the splendid black silk the night o’ the ball?”

“Yes.”

“She was a detective,”—­this in a whisper.

“What!” said the other two, awesomely.

“A detective.”

Then a quick movement of chairs and a pulling of yarn.  Ruth dropped a spool of thread which rattled, as it fell, and rolled a space and lay neglected.

The sister Serene was now laughing.

“It’s ridiculous!” she remarked.

“Go on,” said the others, and one of them added, “Land sakes! don’t stop now.”

“Well, she got sick the other day and sent for a lawyer, an’ who do you suppose it was?”

“I dunno,” said Ruth Tole.  The words had broken away from her, and she covered her mouth, quickly, and began to look out of the window.  The speaker had begun to laugh again.

“’Twas Dick Roberts,” she went on.  “He went over to the tavern; she lay there in bed and had a nurse in the room with her—­a woman she got in Ogdensburg.  She tells the young lawyer she wants him to make her will.  Then she describes her property and he puts it down.  There was a palace in Wales and a castle on the Rhine and pearls and diamonds and fifty thousand pounds in a foreign bank, and I don’t know what all.  Well, ye know, she was pert and handsome, and he began to take notice.”