own price!”

She drew a long, light breath, smiled at me; then:

“My foster mother died. And when she died the end also began for him. I was taken from my school. So dreadfully was he broken that for months he lay abed never speaking, scarcely eating. And all day long during those dreary months I sat alone in that hushed house of death.

“Debt came first; then sheriffs; then suddenly came this war upon us. But nothing aroused him from his lethargy; and all day long he brooded there in silence, day after day, until our creditors would endure no longer, and the bailiff menaced him. Confused and frightened, I implored him to leave the city — jails seeming to me far more terrible than death — and at last persuaded him to the old life once more.