“Where?”

“At Joe Morgan’s.  Joe has the mania, and Mrs. Morgan was alone with him and her sick girl all night.”

“He deserves to have it; that’s all I’ve got to say.”  Slade tried to speak with a kind of rough indifference.

“That’s pretty hard talk,” said one of the company.

“I don’t care if it is.  It’s the truth.  What else could he expect?”

“A man like Joe is to be pitied,” remarked the other.

“I pity his family,” said Slade.

“Especially little Mary.”  The words were uttered tauntingly, and produced murmurs of satisfaction throughout the room.

Slade started back from where he stood, in an impatient manner, saying something that I did not hear.

“Look here, Simon, I heard some strong suggestions over at Lawyer Phillips’ office to-day.”

Slade turned his eyes upon the speaker.

“If that child should die, you’ll probably have to stand a trial for man-slaughter.”

“No—­girl-slaughter,” said Harvey Green, with a cold, inhuman chuckle.

“But I’m in earnest.” said the other.  “Mr. Phillips said that a case could be made out of it.”

“It was only an accident, and all the lawyers in Christendom can’t make anything more of it,” remarked Green, taking the side of the landlord, and speaking with more gravity than before.

“Hardly an accident,” was replied.

“He didn’t throw at the girl.”

“No matter.  He threw a heavy tumbler at her father’s head.  The intention was to do an injury; and the law will not stop to make any nice discriminations in regard to the individual upon whom the injury was wrought.  Moreover, who is prepared to say that he didn’t aim at the girl?”

“Any man who intimates such a thing is a cursed liar!” exclaimed the landlord, half maddened by the suggestion.

“I won’t throw a tumbler at your head,” coolly remarked the individual whose plain speaking had so irritated Simon Slade, “Throwing tumblers I never thought a very creditable kind of argument—­though with some men, when cornered, it is a favorite mode of settling a question.  Now, as for our friend the landlord, I am sorry to say that his new business doesn’t seem to have improved his manners or his temper a great deal.  As a miller, he was one of the best-tempered men in the world, and wouldn’t have harmed a kitten.  But, now, he can swear, and bluster, and throw glasses at people’s heads, and all that sort of thing, with the best of brawling rowdies.  I’m afraid he’s taking lessons in a bad school—­I am.”

“I don’t think you have any right to insult a man in his own house,” answered Slade, in a voice dropped to a lower key than the one in which he had before spoken.

“I had no intention to insult you,” said the other.  “I was only speaking supposititiously, and in view of your position on a trial for manslaughter, when I suggested that no one could prove, or say that you didn’t mean to strike little Mary, when you threw the tumbler.”