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Lucius Fry lived up back of the Power-house on the outskirts of Tinkletown. He had a wife, two children and a horse and buggy. For a great many years he had led a quiet, peaceful, even suppressed existence. Being a rather smallish, bony sort of man, with a large Adam’s apple and bow legs, he was an object of considerable scorn not only to his acquaintances but to his wife and children, and after a fashion, to his horse.

The latter paid absolutely no attention to him when he said “Get-ap,” or when he applied the “gad”; she neither obeyed the command nor resented the chastisement. She jogged along in her own sweet way quite as if he were nowhere in the vicinity. His wife abused him, and his children ignored him. No one, it would appear, had the slightest use or respect for Lucius Fry.

He was, by profession, a well-digger. The installation of a water-works system in Tinkletown had made him a well-digger in name only. For a matter of five or six years, barring the last six months, he had been in the employ of his wife. She took in washing, and it was his job to collect and deliver the “wash” three times a week. In return for this he received board and lodging and an occasional visit to the moving-picture theatre. One of his daughters clerked in the five-and-ten-cent store, and the other, aged twelve, was errand girl to Miss Angie Nixon, the fashionable dressmaker.

Lucius had married very much above him, so to speak. That is to say, his wife was something like nine or ten inches the taller of the two. When they appeared on the street together,–which was seldom,–you could see him only if you chanced to be on that side of her. Mrs. Fry was nearly six feet tall and very wide, but Lucius was not much over five feet two. He had a receding chin that tried to secrete itself behind a scant, dun-colored crop of whiskers, cultivated by him with two purposes in view; first, to provide shelter for his shrinking chin, and second, to avoid the arduous and unnecessary task of shaving.

“What’s this I hear about you, Lucius Fry?” demanded Anderson Crow.

“Don’t you dare arrest Mr. Fry, Anderson Crow,” cried one of the ladies. “He ain’t done anything but give her what she deserves, and—-“

“Can I speak to you private, Mr. Crow?” interrupted Vicious Lucius in a hurried manner. He was wearing an overcoat that came down to his heels, and a derby hat that rested rather firmly upon his ears.

Anderson stared at him in horror.

“Good gosh, Lucius, have you–have you had your hands cut off?” he gasped, looking hard at the flapping coat-sleeves.

“Course I ain’t,” said Mr. Fry, lifting his arms on high, allowing the sleeves to slip down a half a foot or more and revealing his hands. “This ain’t my coat. It’s Jim Banks’. A little too big fer me–and the hat too, I reckon.”

“I just couldn’t let him catch his death o’ cold,” explained the buxom Mrs. Banks.

“He just simply won’t go back into the house,” said Mrs. Ducker. “And I don’t blame him, either. He’s afraid he might throw her out of a window and–and break her neck, didn’t you say, Lucius?”

“No, I didn’t. I said I was afraid I’d break the winder,” said Lucius, glaring at Mrs. Ducker from beneath the rim of Mr. Banks’ hat.

“Where is your wife?” demanded Anderson.

“In there,” said Lucius, pointing a drooping coat-sleeve in the general direction of his domicile. “Come on over here by the lamp-post, Mr. Crow. I got something important I want to say to you.”

“You ain’t going to give yourself up without a fight, are you, Lucius?” cried Mrs. Banks in considerable agitation.

“You leave me alone,” snarled Lucius in a manner so malevolent that Mrs. Banks cried out delightedly: