“You must have a cup of tea before you go,” she said, “and a sugar cake.”

She reached and shook a little iron bell.  In shuffled a small Negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.

Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper.  It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro—­there was no doubt about it.

“Go up to Mr. Baker’s store on the corner, Impy,” she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, “and get a quarter of a pound of tea—­the kind he always sends me—­and ten cents worth of sugar cakes.  Now, hurry.  The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted,” she explained to me.

Impy left by the back way.  Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek—­I was sure it was hers—­filled the hollow house.  Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry man’s voice mingled with the girl’s further squeals and unintelligible words.

Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared.  For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man’s voice; then something like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair.

“This is a roomy house,” she said, “and I have a tenant for part of it.  I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea.  It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store.  Perhaps to-morrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me.”

I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house.  I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave.  After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair’s name.  But to-morrow would do.

That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me.  I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accomplice—­after the fact, if that is the correct legal term—­to a murder.

As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual:  “Step right in, boss.  Carriage is clean—­jus’ got back from a funeral.  Fifty cents to any—­”

And then he knew me and grinned broadly. “’Scuse me, boss; you is de gen’l’man what rid out with me dis mawnin’.  Thank you kindly, suh.”

“I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three,” said I, “and if you will be here, I’ll let you drive me.  So you know Miss Adair?” I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.

“I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh,” he replied.

“I judge that she is pretty poor,” I said.  “She hasn’t much money to speak of, has she?”