For the next two or three weeks Charnock occupied himself with his duties and everything went smoothly at the store and hotel.  He was popular in the neighborhood, since his weaknesses were rather attractive than repellent to people who did not suffer from them.  Men who drove long distances from their lonely farms liked a cheerful talk and to hear the latest joke; others enjoyed a game of cards in the back office when Mrs. Charnock was not about.  Besides, it was known that Keller’s was straight; one got full weight and value when one dealt there.

Trade, moreover, was unusually good.  Settlers looking for land filled the hotel, and now elevators were to be built, farmers hired extra labor and broke new soil.  Household supplies were purchased on an unprecedented scale, and when snow melted the hotel stables were occupied by rough-coated teams, while wagons, foul with the mud of the prairie trails, waited for their loads in front of the store.  Sadie felt cheered and encouraged, and although Bob sometimes spent in careless talk an hour or two that might have been better employed, she was willing to make up for his neglect by extra work in the office at night.  He was doing well and she began to be hopeful.

One evening, however, when there were goods to be entered and bills written out, he went home for supper and did not come back.  Sadie stopped in the office long after the clerk had gone, but when she put down her pen the stove was out and she was surprised to find how late it was.  She felt tired and annoyed, for she had been busily occupied since morning, and suspected that Bob was telling amusing stories while she did his work.  Then in shutting up the store she forgot her rubber over-shoes, and the sidewalk was plastered with sticky mud.  She wore rather expensive slippers and thought they would be spoiled.

Charnock was not about when she entered the hotel, and the guests seemed to have gone to bed.  The light was out in the office, and the big lounge room, where lumps of half-dry mud lay upon the board floor, was unoccupied.  The bell-boy, who was using a brush amidst a cloud of dust, said he did not think the boss had gone upstairs, and with sudden suspicion Sadie entered a dark passage that led to a room where commercial travelers showed their goods.  She opened the door and stopped just inside, her head tilted back and an angry sparkle in her eyes.

The room was very hot and smelt of liquor, tobacco, and kerosene; the lamp had been turned too high and its cracked chimney was black.  Charnock and three others sat round a table on which stood a bottle and four glasses.  One of the glasses had upset and there was a pool, bordered by soaked cigar-ash, on the boards.  The men were playing cards, and a pile of paper money indicated that the stakes were high.  Sadie knew them all and deeply distrusted one, whom she suspected of practising on her husband’s weaknesses; she disliked another, and the third did not count.  She looked up rather awkwardly, and she saw that Charnock had taken too much liquor.