and me come on him some talk was passed and this public nuisance got something. It was all regular and paid for"
"I read about it," Bella interrupted. "He died in the ambulance."
"Then I was slipped the news that they were going to elect me the pretty boy, and I had to make a break. Only temporary, till things are fixed. Thus you see me scattered with hayseed. I was walking through for a lift to Lancaster, where there are some good fellows; but when I saw Snow here taking the air I knew there was one nearer."
"Lemuel; and I'm no good fellow."
"That's the truth," his wife added thinly. "Here is the only one in this house." She touched her abundant self.
"Then I can put up?"
"No," Lemuel Doret told him. "This is a house of God's."
Bella laughed in a rising hysterical key.
"Listen to him," she gasped; "listen to Snow Doret. It's no wonder you might have forgotten him," she proclaimed; "he's been in the pen for ten and a half years with a bunch off for good conduct. But fifteen years ago—say! He went in for knifing a drug store keeper who held out on a 'coke' deal. If this here's a house of God's I'd like to know what he called the one he had then. I couldn't tell you half of what went on, not half, with fixing drinks and frame-ups and skirts. Why, he run a hop joint with the Chinese and took a noseful of snow at every other breath. That was after his gambling
