The glad tidings that his mother-in-law had arrived in town reached Ike just as he was about to swallow a glass of beer. His agitation was extreme. His home life was bad enough before but after the mother arrived it was an inferno. To get a moment's respite from persecution. Ike doped the coffee with a sleeping potion. When his wife and mother-in-law were deep in the land of dreams, he dragged the latter to a haystack and covered her with hay. He was spied upon by some of the villagers and the report spread that he had murdered his mother-in-law. The populace rose in a body and set out to lynch the henpecked husband, Murder would actually have been committed had not the effect of the drug worn off and the wife and her mother awakened. Ike, for his innocent transgression, was made to take a triple dose of the sleeping potion.