Eades had hoped to find Elizabeth alone, and he felt it to be peculiarly

annoying that Miss Masters, whose exclusiveness kept her from visiting

even her friends of the older families, should have chosen for her

exception this particular Sunday afternoon out of all the other Sunday

afternoons at her command. He had found it impossible to talk with

Elizabeth in the way he had expected to talk to her, and he was so out

of sorts that he could not talk to Miss Masters, though that maiden

aristocrat of advancing years, strangely stimulated by his presence,

seemed efficient enough to do all the talking herself.

Elizabeth was trying to find a position that would give her comfort,

without denoting any lapse from the dignity of posture due a family that

had been known in that city for nearly fifty years. But repose was

impossible to her that afternoon, and she nervously kept her hands in

motion, now grasping the back of her chair, now knitting them in her

lap, now raising one to her brow; once she was on the point of clasping

her knee, but this impulse frightened her so that she quickly pressed

her belt down, drew a deep breath, resolutely sat erect, crossed her

hands unnaturally in her lap, and smiled courageously at her visitors.

Eades noted how firm her hands were, and how white; they were indicative

of strength and character. She held her head a little to one side,

keeping up her pale smile of interest for Miss Masters, and Eades

thought that he should always think of her as she sat thus, in her soft

blue dress, her eyes winking rapidly, her dark hair parting of its own

accord.

"And how do you like your new work, Mr. Eades?" Miss Masters was asking

him, and then, without waiting for a reply, she went on: "Do you know, I

believe I have not seen you since your election to congratulate you.

But we've been keeping watch; we have seen what the papers said."

She smiled suggestively, and Eades inclined his head to acknowledge her

tribute.

"I think we are to be congratulated on having you in that position. I

think it is very encouraging to find some of our _best_ people in public

office."

There was a tribute surely in the emphasis she placed on the adjective,

and Eades inclined his head again.

"I really think it was noble in you to accept. It must be very

disagreeable to be brought in contact with--you know!" She smiled and

nodded as if she could not speak the word. "And you have been so brave

and courageous through it all--you are surely to be admired!"

Eades felt suddenly that Miss Masters was not so bad after all; he

relished this appreciation, which he took as an evidence of the opinion

prevailing in the best circles. He recalled a conversation he had

lately had with Elizabeth on this very subject, and, with a sudden

impulse to convict her, he said:

"I'm afraid Miss Ward will hardly agree with you."

Miss Masters turned to Elizabeth with an expression of incredulity and

surprise.

"Oh, I am sure--" she began.

"I believe she considers me harsh and cruel," Eades went on, smiling,

but looking intently at Elizabeth.

"Oh, Mr. Eades is mistaken," she said; "I'm sure I agree with all the

nice things that are said of him."

She detested the weakness of her quick retreat; and she detested more

the immediate conviction that it came from a certain fear of Eades. She

was beginning to feel a kind of mastery in his mere presence, so that

when she was near him she felt powerless to oppose him. The arguments

she always had ready for others, or for him--when he was gone--seemed

invariably to fail her when he was near; she had even gone to the length

of preparing them in advance for him, but when he came, when she saw

him, she could not even state them, and when she tried, they seemed so

weak and puerile and ineffectual as to deserve nothing more serious than

the tolerant smile with which he received and disposed of them. And

now, as this weakness came over her, she felt a fear, not for any of her

principles, which, after all, were but half-formed and superficial, but

a fear for herself, for her own being, and she was suddenly grateful for

Miss Masters's presence. Still, Eades and Miss Masters seemed to be

waiting, and she must say something.

"It's only this," she said. "Not long ago I saw officers taking some

prisoners to the penitentiary. I can never forget the faces of those

men."

Over her sensitive countenance there swept the memory of a pain, and she

had the effect of sinking in her straight chair. But Eades was gazing

steadily at her, a smile on his strong face, and Miss Masters was

saying:

"But, dear me! The penitentiary is the place for such people, isn't it,

Mr. Eades?"

"I think so," said Eades. His eyes were still fixed on Elizabeth, and

she looked away, groping in her mind for some other subject. Just then

the hall bell rang.

Elizabeth was glad, for it was Marriott, and as she took his hand and

said simply, "Ah, Gordon," the light faded from Eades's face.

Marriott's entrance dissolved the situation of a moment before. He

brought into the drawing-room, dimming now in the fading light, a new

atmosphere, something of the air of the spring. Miss Masters greeted

him with a manner divided between a certain distance, because Marriott

had not been born in that city, and a certain necessary approach to his

mere deserts as a man. Marriott did not notice this, but dropped on to

the divan. Elizabeth had taken a more comfortable chair. Marriott,

plainly, was not in the formal Sunday mood, just as he was not in the

formal Sunday dress. He had taken in Eades's frock-coat and white

waistcoat at a glance, and then looked down at his own dusty boots.

"I've been hard at work to-day, Elizabeth," he said, turning to her with

a smile.

"Working! You must remember the Sabbath day to keep it--"

"The law wasn't made for lawyers, was it, John?" He appealed suddenly

to Eades, whose conventionality he always liked to shock, and Elizabeth

smiled, and Eades became very dignified.

"I've been out to see our old friends, the Koerners," Marriott went on.

"Oh, tell me about them!" said Elizabeth, leaning forward with eager

interest. "How is Gusta?"

"Gusta's well, and prettier than ever. Jove! What a beauty that girl

is!"

"Isn't she pretty?" said Elizabeth. "She was a delight in the house for

that very reason. And how is poor old Mr. Koerner--and all of them?"

"Well," said Marriott, "Koerner's amputated leg is all knotted up with

rheumatism."

Miss Masters's dark face was pinched in a scowl.

"And Archie's in jail."

"In jail!" Elizabeth dropped back in her chair.

"Yes, in jail."

"Why! What for?"

"Well, he seems to belong to a gang that was arrested day before

yesterday for something or other."

"There, Mr. Eades," said Elizabeth suddenly, "there now, you must let

Archie Koerner go."

"Oh, I'll not let John get a chance at him," said Marriott. "He's

charged with a misdemeanor only--he'll go to the workhouse, if he goes

anywhere."

"And you'll defend him?"

"Oh, I suppose so," said Marriott wearily. "You've given me a whole

family of clients, Elizabeth. I went out to see the old man about his

case--I think we'll try it early this term."

"These Koerners are a family in whom I've been interested," Elizabeth

suddenly thought to explain to Miss Masters, and then she told them of

Gusta, of old Koerner's accident, and of Archie's career as a soldier.

"They've had a hard winter of it," said Marriott "The old man, of

course, can't work, and Archie, by his experience as a soldier, seems to

have been totally unfitted for everything--except shooting--and shooting

is against the law."

Now that the conversation had taken this turn, Miss Masters moved to go.

She bade Marriott farewell coldly, and Eades warmly, and Elizabeth went

with her into the hall. Eades realized that all hope of a tete-a-tete

with Elizabeth had departed, and he and Marriott not long afterward left

to walk down town together. The sun was warm for the first time in

months, and the hope of the spring had brought the people out of doors.

Claybourne Avenue was crowded with carriages in which families solemnly

enjoyed their Sunday afternoon drives, as they had enjoyed their

stupefying dinners of roast beef four hours before. Electric

automobiles purred past, and now and then a huge touring car, its driver

in his goggles resembling some demon, plunged savagely along, its horn

honking hoarsely at every street crossing. The sidewalks were thronged

with pedestrians, young men whose lives had no other diversion than to

parade in their best clothes or stand on dusty down-town corners, smoke

cigars and watch the girls that tilted past.

"That Miss Masters is a fool," said Marriott, when they had got away

from the house.

"Yes, she is," Eades assented. "She was boring Miss Ward to death."

"Poor Elizabeth!" said Marriott with a little laugh. "She is so patient,

and people do afflict her so."

Eades did not like the way in which Marriott could speak of Elizabeth,

any more than he liked to hear Elizabeth address Marriott as Gordon.

"I see the _Courier_ gave you a fine send-off this morning," Marriott

went on. "What a record you made! Not a single acquittal the whole

term!"

Eades made no reply. He was wondering if Elizabeth had seen the

_Courier's_ editorial. In the morning he thought he would send her a

bunch of violets, and Tuesday--

"Your course is most popular," Marriott went on. And Eades looked at

him; he could not always understand Marriott, and he did not like to

have him speak of his course as if he had deliberately chosen it as a

mere matter of policy.

"It's the right course," he said significantly.

"Oh, I suppose so," Marriott replied. "Still--I really can't

congratulate you when I think of those poor devils--"

"I haven't a bit of sympathy for them," said Eades coldly. This, he

thought, was where Elizabeth got those strange, improper notions.

Marriott should not be permitted--

Just then, in an automobile tearing by, they saw Dick Ward, and Eades

suddenly recalled a scene he had witnessed in the club the day before.

"That young fellow's going an awful gait," he said suddenly.

"Who, Dick?"

"Yes, I saw him in the club yesterday--"

"I know," said Marriott. "It's a shame. He's a nice little chap."

"Can't you do something for him? He seems to like you."

"What can I do?"

"Well, can't you--speak to him?"

"I never could preach," said Marriott.

"Well," said Eades helplessly, "it's too bad."

"Yes," said Marriott; "it would break their hearts--Ward's and

Elizabeth's."

XI

The Koerners, indeed, as Marriott said, had had a hard winter. The old

man, sustained at first by a foolish optimism, had expected that his

injury would be compensated immediately by heavy damages from the

railroad he had served so long. Marriott had begun suit, and then the

law began the slow and wearisome unfolding of its interminable delays.

Weeks and months went by and nothing was done. Koerner sent for

Marriott, and Marriott explained--the attorneys for the railroad company

had filed a demurrer, the docket was full, the case would not be reached

for a long time. Koerner could not understand; finally, he began to

doubt Marriott; some of his neighbors, with the suspicion natural to the

poor, hinted that Marriott might have been influenced by the company.

Koerner's leg, too, gave him incessant pain. All winter long he was

confined to the house, and the family grew tired of his monotonous

complainings. To add to this, Koerner was now constantly dunned by the

surgeon and by the authorities of the hospital; the railroad refused to

pay these bills because Koerner had brought suit; the bills, to a frugal

German like Koerner, were enormous, appalling.

The Koerners, a year before, had bought the house in which they lived,

borrowing the money from a building and loan association. The agent of

the association, who had been so kind and obliging before the mortgage

was signed, was now sharp and severe; he had lately told Koerner that

unless he met the next instalment of interest he would set the family

out in the street.

Koerner had saved some money from his wages, small as they were; but

this was going fast. During the winter Mrs. Koerner, though still

depressed and ill, had begun to do washings; the water, splashing over

her legs from the tubs in the cold wood-shed day after day, had given

her rheumatism. Gusta helped, of course, but with all they could do it

was hard to keep things going. Gusta tried to be cheerful, but this was

the hardest work of all; she often thought of the pleasant home of the

Wards, and wished she were back there. She would have gone back,

indeed, and given her father her wages, but there was much to do at

home--the children to look after, the house to keep, the meals to get,

the washings to do, and her father's leg to dress. Several times she

consulted Marriott about the legal entanglements into which the family

was being drawn; Marriott was wearied with the complications--the damage

suit, the mortgage, the threatened actions for the doctor's bills. The

law seemed to be snarling the Koerners in every one of its meshes, and

the family was settling under a Teutonic melancholia.

Just at this time the law touched the family at another point--Archie

was arrested. For a while he had sought work, but his experience in the

army had unfitted him for every normal calling; he had acquired a taste

for excitement and adventure, and no peaceful pursuit could content him.

He would not return to the army because he had too keen a memory of the

indignities heaped on a common soldier by officers who had been trained

from youth to an utter disregard of all human relations save those that

were unreal and artificial. He had learned but one thing in the army,

and that was to shoot, and he could shoot well. Somehow he had secured

a revolver, a large one, thirty-eight caliber, and with this he was

constantly practising.

Because Archie would not work, Koerner became angry with him; he was

constantly remonstrating with him and urging him to get something to do.

Archie took all his father's reproaches with his usual good nature, but

as the winter wore slowly on and the shadow of poverty deepened in the

home, the old man became more and more depressed, his treatment of his

son became more and more bitter. Finally Archie stayed away from home

to escape scolding. He spent his evenings in Nussbaum's saloon, where,

because he had been a soldier in the Philippines and was attractive and

good looking, he was a great favorite and presently a leader of the

young men who spent their evenings there. These young men were workers

in a machine shop; they had a baseball club called the "Vikings," and in

summer played games in the parks on Sundays. In the winter they spent

their evenings in the saloon, the only social center accessible to them;

here, besides playing pool, they drank beer, talked loudly, laughed

coarsely, sang, and now and then fought, very much like Vikings indeed.

Later, roaming down town to Market Place, Archie made other

acquaintances, and these young men were even more like Vikings. They

were known as the Market Place gang, and they made their headquarters in

Billy Deno's saloon, though they were well known in all the little

saloons around the four sides of the Market. They were known, too, at

the police station, which stood grimly overlooking Market Place, for

they had committed many petty raids, and most of them had served terms

in the workhouse. One by one they were being sent to the penitentiary,

a distinction they seemed to prize, or which their fellows seemed to

prize in them when they got back. The gang had certain virtues,--it

stuck together; if a member was in trouble, the other members were all

willing to do anything to help him out. Usually this willingness took

the form of appearing in police court and swearing to an alibi, but they

had done this service so often that the police-court habitues and

officials smiled whenever they appeared. Their testimonies never

convinced the judge; but they were imperturbable and ever ready to

commit perjury in the cause.

When Archie was out of money he could not buy cartridges for his

revolver, and he discovered by chance one afternoon, when he had drifted

into a little shooting gallery, that the proprietor was glad to give him

cartridges in return for an exhibition with the revolver, for the

exhibition drew a crowd, and the boozy sailors who lounged along the

Market in the evening were fascinated by Archie's skill and forthwith

emulated it. It was in this way that Archie met the members of the

Market Place gang, and finding them stronger, braver, more enterprising

spirits than the Vikings, he became one of them, spent his days and

nights with them, and visited Nussbaum's no more. He became the fast

friend of Spud Healy, the leader of the gang, and in this way he came to

be arrested.

Besides Archie and Spud Healy, Red McGuire, Butch Corrigan, John Connor

and Mike Nailor were arrested. A Market Place grocer had missed a box

of dried herrings, reported it to the police, and the police, of course,

had arrested on suspicion such of the gang as they could find.

Archie's arrest was a blow to Koerner. He viewed the matter from the

German standpoint, just as he viewed everything, even after his

thirty-seven years in America. It was a blow to his German reverence

for law, a reverence which his own discouraging experience of American

law could not impair, and it was a blow to his German conception of

parental authority; he denounced Archie, declaring that he would do

nothing for him even if he could.

Gusta, in the great love she had for Archie, felt an instant desire to

go to him, but when she mentioned this, her father turned on her so

fiercely that she did not dare mention it again. On Monday morning,

when her work was done, Gusta, dressing herself in the clothes she had

not often had occasion to wear during the winter, stole out of the house

and went down town,--a disobedience in which she was abetted by her

mother. Half an hour later Gusta was standing bewildered in the main

entrance of the Market Place Police Station. The wide hall was vacant,

the old and faded signs on the walls, bearing in English and in German

instructions for police-court witnesses, could not aid her. From all

over the building she heard noises of various activities,--the hum of

the police court, the sound of voices, from some near-by room a laugh.

She went on and presently found an open door, and within she saw several

officers in uniform, with handsome badges on their breasts and stars on

the velvet collars of their coats. As she hesitated before this door, a

policeman noticed her, and his coarse face lighted up with a suggestive

expression as he studied the curves of her figure. He planted himself

directly in front of her, his big figure blocking the way.

"I'd like to speak to my brother, if I can," said Gusta. "He's

arrested."

She colored and her eyes fell. The policeman's eyes gleamed.

"What's his name, Miss?" he asked.

"Archie Koerner."

"What's he in fer?"

"I can't tell you, sir."

The policeman looked at her boldly, and then he took her round arm in

his big hand and turned her toward the open door.

"Inspector," he said, "this girl wants to see her brother. What's his

name?" he asked again, turning to Gusta.

"Koerner, sir," said Gusta, speaking to the scowling inspector, "Archie

Koerner."

Inspector McFee, an old officer who had been on the police force for

twenty-five years, eyed her suspiciously. His short hair was dappled

with gray, and his mustache was clipped squarely and severely on a level

with his upper lip. Gusta had even greater fear of him than she had of

the policeman, who now released his hold of her arm. Instinctively she

drew away from him.

"Archie Koerner, eh?" said the inspector in a gruff voice.

At the name, a huge man, swart and hairy, in civilian's dress, standing

by one of the big windows, turned suddenly and glowered at Gusta from

under thick black eyebrows. His hair, black and coarse and closely

clipped, bristled almost low enough on his narrow forehead to meet his

heavy brows. He had a flat nose, and beneath, half encircling his

broad, deep mouth, was a black mustache, stubbed and not much larger

than his eyebrows. His jaw was square and heavy. A gleam showed in his

small black eyes and gave a curiously sinister aspect to his black

visage.

"What's that about Koerner?" he said, coming forward aggressively.

Gusta shrank from him. She felt herself in the midst of powerful, angry

foes.

"You say he's your brother?" asked the inspector.

"Yes, sir."

"What do you want of him?"

"Oh, I just want to see him, sir," Gusta said. "I just want to talk to

him a minute--that's all, sir."

Her blue eyes were swimming with tears.

"Hold on a minute," said the man of the dark visage. He went up to the

inspector, whispered to him a moment. The inspector listened, finally

nodded, then took up a tube that hung by his desk and blew into it. Far

away a whistle shrilled.

"Let this girl see Koerner," he said, speaking into the tube, "in

Kouka's presence." Then, dropping the tube, he said to Gusta:

"Go down-stairs--you can see him."

The policeman took her by the arm again, and led her down the hall and

down the stairs to the turnkey's room. The turnkey unlocked a heavy

door and tugged it open; inside, in a little square vestibule, Gusta saw

a dim gas-jet burning. The turnkey called:

"Koerner!"

Then he turned to Gusta and said:

"This way."

She went timidly into the vestibule and found herself facing a heavy

door, crossed with iron bars. On the other side of the bars was the

face of Archie.

"Hello, Gusta," he said.

She had lifted her skirts a little; the floor seemed to her unclean.

The odor of disinfectants, which, strong as it was, could not overpower

the other odors it was intended to annihilate, came strongly to her.

Through the bars she had a glimpse of high whitewashed walls, pierced

near the top with narrow windows dirty beyond all hope. On the other

side was a row of cells, their barred doors now swinging open. Along

the wall miserable figures were stretched on a bench. Far back, where

the prison grew dark as night, other figures slouched, and she saw

strange, haggard faces peering curiously at her out of the gloom.

"Hello, Gusta," Archie said.

She felt that she should take his hand, but she disliked to thrust it

through the bars. Still she did so. In slipping her hand through to

take Archie's hand it touched the iron, which was cold and soft as if

with some foul grease.

"Oh, Archie," she said, "what has happened?"

"Search me," he said, "I don't know what I'm here for. Ask Detective

Kouka there. He run me in."

Gusta turned. The black-visaged man was standing beside her. Archie

glared at the detective in open hatred, and Kouka sneered but controlled

himself, and looked away as if, after all, he were far above such

things.

Then they were silent, for Gusta could not speak.

"How did you hear of the pinch?" asked Archie presently.

"Mrs. Schopfle was in--she told us," replied Gusta.

"What did the old man say?"

"Oh, Archie! He's awful mad!"

Archie hung his head and meditatively fitted the toe of his boot into

one of the squares made by the crossed bars at the bottom of the door.

"Say, Gusta," he said, "you tell him I'm in wrong; will you? Honest to

God, I am!"

He raised his face suddenly and held it close to the bars.

"I will, Archie," she said.

"And how's ma?"

"Oh, she's pretty well." Gusta could not say the things she wished; she

felt the presence of Kouka.

"Say, Gusta," said Archie, "see Mr. Marriott; tell him to come down

here; I want him to take my case. I'll work and pay him when I get out.

Say, Gusta," he went on, "tell him to come down this afternoon. My God,

I've got to get out of here! Will you? You know where his office is?"

"I'll find it," said Gusta.

"It's in the Wayne Building."

Gusta tried to look at Archie; she tried to keep her eyes on his face,

on his tumbled yellow hair, on his broad shoulders, broader still

because his coat and waistcoat were off, and his white throat was

revealed by his open shirt. But she found it hard, because her eyes

were constantly challenged by the sights beyond--the cell doors, the men

sleeping off their liquor, the restless figures that haunted the

shadows, the white faces peering out of the gloom. The smell that came

from within was beginning to sicken her.

"Oh, Archie," she said, "it must be awful in there!"

Archie became suddenly enraged

"Awful?" he said. "It's hell! This place ain't fit for a dog to stay

in. Why, Gusta, it's alive--it's crawlin'! That's what it is! I didn't

sleep a wink last night! Not a wink! Say, Gusta," he grasped the bars,

pressed his face against them, "see Mr. Marriott and tell him to get me

out of here. Will you? See him, will you?"

"I will, Archie," she said. "Ill go right away."

She was eager now to leave, for she had already turned sick with

loathing.

"And say, Gusta," Archie said, "get me some cigarettes and send 'em down

by Marriott."

"All right," she said. She was backing away.

"Good-by," he called. The turnkey was locking the door on him.

Outside, Gusta leaned a moment against the wall of the building,

breathing in the outdoor air; presently she went on, but it was long

before she could cleanse her mouth of the taste or her nostrils of the

odor of the foul air of that prison in which her brother was locked.

XII

Gusta hurried out of the alley as fast as she could go; she wished to

get away from the police station, and to forget the faces of those men

in prison. It was now nine o'clock and the activity of the Market was

waning; the few gardener's wagons that lingered with the remnants of

their loads were but a suggestion of the hundreds of wagons that had

packed the square before the dawn. Under the shed, a block long, a

constable was offering at public vendue the household goods of some

widow who had been evicted; the torn and rusty mattresses, broken chairs

and an old bed were going for scarcely enough to pay the costs; a

little, blue-bearded man, who had forced the sale, stood by sharply

watching, ready to bid the things in himself if the dealers in

second-hand furniture should not offer enough. Gusta hurried on, past

butcher-shops, past small saloons, and she hurried faster because every

one--the policemen, the second-hand dealers, the drivers of the

market-wagons, the butchers in their blood-stained smock frocks--turned

to look at her. It was three blocks to the Wayne Building, rearing its

fifteen stories aloft from the roaring tide of business at its feet, and

Gusta was glad to lose herself in the crowds that swarmed along the

street.

The waiting-room of Marriott's office was filled; the door which was

lettered with his name was closed, and Gusta had to wait. She joined

the group that sat silent in the chairs along the walls, and watched the

girl with the yellow hair at the typewriter. The girl's white fingers

twinkled over the keys; the little bell tinkled and the girl snatched

back the carriage of the machine with a swift grating sound; she wrote

furiously, and Gusta was fascinated. She wished she might be a

typewriter; it must be so much easier to sit here in this pleasant,

sunlit office, high above the cares and turmoil of the world, and write

on that beautiful machine; so much easier than to toil in a poor,

unhappy home with a mother ill, a father maimed and racked by pains so

that he was always morose and cross, a brother in jail, and always

work--the thankless task of washing at a tub, of getting meals when

there was little food to get them with. Gusta thought she might master

the machine, but no--her heart sank--she could not spell nor understand

all the long words the lawyers used, so that was hopeless.

After a while the door marked "Mr. Marriott" opened, and a man stepped

out, a well-dressed man, with an air of prosperousness; he glanced at

the yellow-haired typewriter as he passed out of the office. Marriott

was standing in his door, looking at the line of waiting clients; his

face was worn and tired. He seemed to hesitate an instant, then he

nodded to one of the waiting women, and she rose and entered the private

office. Just as Marriott was closing the door, he saw Gusta and smiled,

and Gusta was cheered; it was the first friendly smile she had seen that

day.

She had to wait two hours. The men did not detain Marriott long, but

the women remained in his private office an interminable time, and

whenever he opened his door to dismiss one of them, he took out his

watch and looked at it. At last, however, when all had gone, he said:

"Well, Gusta, what can I do for you?" He dropped into his chair, swung

round to face her, rested one elbow on the top of the desk and leaned

his head in his hand.

"I came to see about Archie."

Marriott felt the deadly ennui that came over him at the thought of

these petty criminal cases. The crimes were so small, so stupid, and so

squalid, they had nothing to excuse them, not even the picturesque

quality of adventure that by some sophistry might extenuate crimes of a

more enterprising and dangerous class. They were so hopeless, too, and

Marriott could hardly keep a straight face while he defended the

perpetrators, and yet he allowed himself to be drawn into them; he found

himself constantly pleading for some poor devil who had neither money to

pay him nor the decency to thank him. Sometimes he wondered why he did

it, and whenever he wondered he decided that he would never take another

such case. Then the telephone would ring, and before he knew it he

would be in police court making another poor devil's cause his own,

while more important litigation must wait--for the petty criminals were

always in urgent need; the law would not stay for them nor abide their

convenience; with them it was imperative, implacable, insistent, as if

to dress the balance for its delay and complaisance with its larger

criminals. Marriott often thought it over, and he had thought enough to

recognize in these poor law-breakers a certain essential innocence; they

were so sublimely foolish, so illogical, they made such lavish sacrifice

of all that was best in their natures; they lived so hardly, so

desperately; they paid such tremendous prices and got so little; they

were so unobservant, they learned nothing by experience. And yet with

one another they were so kind, so considerate, so loyal, that it seemed

hard to realize that they could be so unkind and so disloyal to the rest

of mankind. In his instinctive love of human nature, their very

hopelessness and helplessness appealed to him.

"Mr. Marriott, do you think he is guilty?" Gusta was asking.

"Guilty?" said Marriott, automatically repeating the word. "Guilty?

What difference does that make?"

"Oh, Mr. Marriott!" the girl exclaimed, her blue eyes widening.

"Surely, it makes all the difference in the world!"

"To you?"

"Why--yes--shouldn't it?"

"No, it shouldn't, Gusta, and what's more, it doesn't. And it doesn't to

me, either. You don't want him sent to prison even if he is guilty, do

you?"

"N--no," Gusta hesitated as she assented to the heresy.

"No, of course you don't. Because, Gusta, we know him--we know he's all

right, don't we, no matter what he has done? Just as we know that we

ourselves are all right when we do bad things--isn't that it?"

The girl was sitting with her yellow head bent; she was trying to think.

"But father would say--"

"Oh, yes," Marriott laughed, "father would say and grandfather would

say, too--that's just the trouble. Father got his notions from the Old

World, but we--Gusta, we know more than father or grandfather in this

country."

Marriott enjoyed the discomfiture that Gusta plainly showed in her

inability to understand in the least what he was saying. He felt a

little mean about it, for he recognized that he was speaking for his own

benefit rather than for hers; he had wished Elizabeth might be there to

hear him.

"I don't know much about it, Mr. Marriott," Gusta said presently, "but

when will you go to see him?"

"Oh, I'll try to get down this afternoon."

"All right. He told me to ask you please to bring him some cigarettes.

Of course," she was going on in an apologetic tone, but Marriott cut her

short:

"Oh, he wants cigarettes? Well, I'll take them to him."

Then they talked the futilities which were all such a case could

inspire, and Marriott, looking at his watch, made Gusta feel that she

should go. But the world wore a new aspect for her when she left

Marriott's office. The spring sun was warm now, and she felt that she

had the right to glory in it. The crowds in the streets seemed human

and near, not far away and strange as they had been before; she felt

that she had somehow been restored to her own rights in life. She had

not understood Marriott's philosophy in the least, but she went away

with the memory of his face and the memory of his smile; she could not

realize her thoughts; it was a feeling more than anything else, but she

knew that here was one man, at least, who believed in her brother, and

it seemed that he was determined to believe in him no matter what the

brother did; and he believed in her, too, and this was everything--this

made the whole world glad, just as the sun made the whole world glad

that morning.

But Gusta's heart sank at the thought of going home; there was nothing

there now but discord and toil. The excitement, the change of the

morning, the little interview with Marriott, had served to divert her,

and now the thought of returning to that dull and wearisome routine was

more than ever distasteful. It was nearly noon, and she would be

expected, but she did not like to lose these impressions, and she did

not like to leave this warm sunshine, these busy, moving streets, this

contact with active life, and so she wandered on out Claybourne Avenue.

There was slowly taking form within her a notion of eking out her

pleasure by going to see Elizabeth Ward, but she did not let the thought

wholly take form; rather she let it lie dormant under her other

thoughts. She walked along in the sunlight and looked at the

automobiles that went trumpeting by, at the carriages rolling home with

their aristocratic mistresses lolling on their cushions. Gusta found a

pleasure in recognizing many of these women; she had opened the Wards'

big front door to them, she had served them with tea, or at dinner; she

had heard their subdued laughter; she had covertly inspected their

toilets; some of them had glanced for an instant into her eyes and

thanked her for some little service. And then she could recall things

she had heard them say, bits of gossip, or scandal, some of which gave

her pleasure, others feelings of hatred and disgust. A rosy young

matron drove by in a phaeton, with her pretty children piled about her

feet, and the sight pleased Gusta. She smiled and hurried on with

quickened step.

At last she saw the familiar house, and then to her joy she saw

Elizabeth on the veranda, leaning against one of the pillars, evidently

taking the air, enjoying the sun and the spring. Elizabeth saw Gusta,

too, and her eyes brightened.

"Why, Gusta!" she said. "Is that you?"

Gusta stood on the steps and looked up at Elizabeth. Her face was rosy

with embarrassment and pleasure. Elizabeth perched on the rail of the

veranda and examined the vine of Virginia roses that had not yet begun

to put forth.

"And how are you getting along?" she said. "How are they all at home?"

Gusta told her of her father and of her mother and of the children.

Elizabeth tried to talk to her; she was fond of her, but there seemed to

be nothing to talk about. She knew, too, how Gusta adored her, and she

felt that she must always retain this adoration, and constantly prove

her kindness to Gusta. But the conversation was nothing but a series of

questions she extorted from herself by a continued effort that quickly

wearied her, especially as Gusta's replies were delivered so promptly

and so laconically that she could not think of other questions fast

enough. At last she said:

"And how's Archie?"

And then instantly she remembered that Archie was in prison. Her heart

smote her for her thoughtlessness. Gusta's head was hanging.

"I've just been to see him," she said.

"I wished to hear of him, Gusta," Elizabeth said, trying by her tone to

destroy the quality of her first question. "I spoke to Mr. Marriott

about him--I'm sure he'll get him off."

Gusta made no reply, and Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling.

[Illustration: Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling]

"Come, Gusta," she said sympathetically, "you mustn't feel bad."

The girl suddenly looked at her, her eyes full of tears.

"Oh, Miss Elizabeth," she said, "if you could only know! To see him

down there--in that place! Such a thing never happened to us before!"

"But I'm sure it'll all come out right in the end--I'm sure of that.

There must have been some mistake. Tell me all about it."

And then Gusta told her the whole story.

"You don't know how it feels, Miss Elizabeth," she said when she had

done, "to have your own brother--such a thing couldn't happen to

you--here." Gusta glanced about her, taking in at a glance, as it were,

the large house, and all its luxury and refinement and riches, as if

these things were insurmountable barriers to such misfortune and

disgrace.

Elizabeth saw the glance, and some way, suddenly, the light and warmth

went out of the spring day for her. The two girls looked at each other

a moment, then they looked away, and there was silence. Elizabeth's

brows were contracted; in her eyes there was a look of pain.

When Gusta had gone Elizabeth went indoors, but her heart was heavy.

She tried to throw off the feeling, but could not. She told herself

that it was her imagination, always half morbid, but this did not

satisfy her. She was silent at the luncheon-table until her mother said:

"Elizabeth, what in the world ails you?"

"Oh; nothing."

"I know something does," insisted Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth, with her head inclined, was outlining with the prong of a

fork the pattern on the salad bowl.

"Gusta has been here, telling me her troubles."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Ward.

"You know her brother has been arrested."

"What for?"

"Stealing."

"Indeed! Well! I do wish she'd keep away! I'm sure I don't know what

we've done that we should have such things brought into our house!"

"But it's too bad," said Elizabeth. "The young man--"

"Yes, the young man! If he'd go to work and earn an honest living, he

wouldn't be arrested for stealing!"

"I was just thinking--" Elizabeth finished the pattern on the salad

bowl and inclined her head on the other side, as if she had really

designed the pattern and were studying the effect of her finished

work,--"that if Dick--"

"Why, Elizabeth!" Mrs. Ward cried. "How can you say such a thing?"

Elizabeth smiled, and the smile irritated her mother.

"I'm sure it's entirely different!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Dick does not

belong to that class at all!"

XIII

The truth was that Elizabeth had been worried for days about Dick. A

few evenings before, Ward, who took counsel of his daughter rather than

of his wife in such affairs, had told her of his concern about his son.

"I don't know what to do with the boy," he had said. "He seems to have

no interest in anything; he tired of school, and he tired of college;

and now he is of age and--doing nothing."

She remembered how he had sat there, puffing at his cigar as if that

could assist him to some conclusion.

"I tried him in the office for a while, you know, but he did not seem to

take it seriously--of course, it wasn't really serious; the work went on

as well without him as with him. I guess he knew that."

Elizabeth sat and thought, but the problem which her father had put to

her immediately overpowered her; there seemed to be no solution at

all--she could not even arrange its terms in her mind, and she was

silent, yet her silence was charged with sympathy.

"I've talked to him, but that does no good. I've pleaded with him, but

that does no good. I tried giving him unlimited money, then I put him

on an allowance, then I cut him off altogether--it was just the same."

Ward smoked a moment in silence.

"I've thought of every known profession. He says he doesn't want to be

a lawyer or a doctor; he has no taste for mechanics, and he seems to

have no interest in business. I've thought of sending him abroad, or

out West, but he doesn't want to do that."

And again the silence and the smoking and the pain.

"He's out to-night--where, I don't know. I don't want to know--I'm

afraid to know!"

There was something wild, appealing and pathetic in this cry wrung from

a father's heart. Elizabeth had looked up quickly, her own heart aching

with pity. She recalled how he had said:

"Your mother--she doesn't understand; I don't know that I want her to;

she idolizes the boy; she thinks he can't do wrong."

And then Elizabeth had slipped her arm about his neck, and, leaning

over, had placed her cheek against his; her tears had come, and she had

felt that his tears had come; he had patted her hand. They had sat thus

for a long while.

"Poor boy!" Ward had said again. "He's only making trouble for himself.

I'd like to help him, but somehow, Bess, I can't get next to him; when I

try to talk to him, when I try to be confidential and all

that--something comes between us, and I can't say it right. I can't talk

to him as I could to any other man. I don't know why it is; I sometimes

think that it's all my fault, that I haven't reared him right, that I

haven't done my duty by him, and yet, God knows, I've tried!"

"Oh, papa," she had replied protestingly, "you mustn't blame

yourself--you've done everything."

"He's really a good boy," Ward had gone on irrelevantly, ignoring

himself in his large, unselfish thought for his son. "He's kind and

generous, and he means well enough--and--and--I think he likes me."

This had touched her to the quick, and she had wept softly, stroking her

father's cheek.

"Can't you--couldn't you--" he began. "Do you think you could talk to

him, Bess?"

"I'll try," she said, and just then her brother had come into the room,

rosy and happy and unsuspecting, and their confidences were at an end.

Ward did not realize, of course, that in asking Elizabeth to speak to

Dick he was laying a heavy burden on her. She had promised her father

in a kind of pity for him, a pity which sprang from her great love; but

as she thought it over, wondering what she was to say, the ordeal grew

greater and greater--greater than any she had ever had to encounter.

For several days she was spared the necessity of redeeming her promise,

for Dick was so little at home, and fortunately, as Elizabeth felt, when

he was there the circumstances were not propitious. Then she kept

putting it off, and putting it off; and the days went by. Her father

had not recurred to the subject; having once opened his heart, he seemed

suddenly to have closed it, even against her. His attitude was such

that she felt she could not talk the matter over with him; if she could

she might have asked him to give her back her promise. She could not

talk it over with her mother, and she longed to talk it over with some

one. One evening she had an impulse to tell Marriott about it. She

knew that he could sympathize with her, and, what was more, she knew

that he could sympathize with Dick, whereas she could not sympathize

with Dick at all. Though she laughed, and sang, and read, and talked,

and drove, and lived her customary life, the subject was always in her

thoughts. Finally she discovered that she was adopting little

subterfuges in order to evade it, and she became disgusted with herself.

She had morbid fears that her character would give way under the strain.

At night she lay awake waiting, as she knew her father must be waiting,

for the ratchet of Dick's key in the night-latch.

In the many different ways she imagined herself approaching the subject

with Dick, in the many different conversations she planned, she always

found herself facing an impenetrable barrier--she did not know with what

she was to reproach him, with what wrong she was to charge him. She

conceived of the whole affair, as the Anglo-Saxon mind feels it must

always deal with wrong, in the forensic form--indictment, trial,

judgment, execution. But after all, what had Dick done? As she saw him

coming and going through the house, at the table, or elsewhere, he was

still the same Dick--and this perplexed her; for, looking at him through

the medium of her talk with her father, Dick seemed to be something else

than her brother; he seemed to have changed into something bad. Thus

his misdeeds magnified themselves to her mind, and she thought of them

instead of him, of the sin instead of the sinner.

That night Dick did not come at all. In the morning when her father

appeared, Elizabeth saw that he was haggard and old. As he walked

heavily toward his waiting carriage, her love and pity for him received

a sudden impetus.

Dick did not return until the next evening, and the following morning he

came down just as his father was leaving the house. If Ward heard his

son's step on the stairs, he did not turn, but went on out, got into his

brougham, and sank back wearily on its cushions. It happened that

Elizabeth came into the hall at that moment; she saw her father, and she

saw her brother coming down the stairs, dressed faultlessly in new

clothes and smoking a cigarette. As Elizabeth saw him, so easy and

unconcerned, her anger suddenly blazed out, her eyes flashed, and she

took one quick step toward him. His fresh, ruddy face wore a smile, but

as she confronted him and held out one arm in dramatic rigidity and

pointed toward her father, Dick halted and his smile faded.

"Look at him!" Elizabeth said, pointing to her father. "Look at him! Do

you know what you're doing?"

"Why, Bess"--Dick began, surprised.

"You're breaking his heart, that's what you're doing!"

She stood there, her eyes menacing, her face flushed, her arm extended.

The carriage was rolling down the drive and her father had gone, but

Elizabeth still had the vision of his bent frame as he got into his

carriage.

"Did you see him?" she went on. "Did you see how he's aging, how much

whiter his hair has grown in the last few weeks, how his figure has

bent? You're killing him, that's what you're doing, killing him inch by

inch. Why can't you do it quick, all at once, and be done with it? That

would be kinder, more merciful!"

Her lip curled in sarcasm. Dick stood by the newel-post, his face

white, his lips open as if to speak.

"You spend your days in idleness and your nights in dissipation. You

won't work. You won't do anything. You are disgracing your family and

your name. Can't you see it, or won't you?"

"Why, Bess," Dick began, "what's the--"

She looked at him a moment; he was like her mother, so good-natured, so

slow to anger. His attitude, his expression, infuriated her; words

seemed to have no effect, and in her fury she felt that she must make

him see, that she must force him to realize what he was doing--force him

to acknowledge his fault--force him to be good.

"Of course, you'd just stand there!" she said. "Why don't you say

something? You know what you're doing--you know it better than I. I

should think you'd be ashamed to look a sister in the face!"

Dick had seen Elizabeth angry before, but never quite like this. Slowly

within him his own anger was mounting. What right, he thought, had she

to take him thus to task--him, a man? He drew himself up, his face

suddenly lost its pallor and a flush of scarlet mottled it. Strangely,

in that same instant, Elizabeth's face became very white.

"Look here," he said, speaking in a heavy voice, "I don't want any more

of this from you!"

For an instant there was something menacing in his manner, and then he

walked away and left her.

Elizabeth stood a moment, trembling violently. He had gone into the

dining-room; he was talking with his mother in low tones. Elizabeth

went up the stairs to her room and closed the door, and then a great

wave of moral sickness swept over her. She sat down, trying to compose

herself, trying to still her nerves. The whole swift scene with her

brother flashed before her in all its squalor. Had she acted well or

rightly? Was her anger what is called a righteous indignation? She was

sure that she had acted for the best, for her father in the first place,

and for Dick more than all, but it was suddenly revealed to her that she

had failed; she had not touched his heart at all; she had expended all

her force, and it was utterly lost; she had failed--failed. This word

repeated itself in her brain. She tried to think, but her brain was in

turmoil; she could think but one thing--she had failed. She bent her

head and wept.

XIV

Archie Koerner and Spud Healy and the others of the gang lay in prison

for a week; each morning they were taken with other prisoners to the

bull-pen, and there they would stand--for an hour, two hours, three

hours--and look through the heavy wire screen at officers, lawyers,

court attaches, witnesses and prosecutors who passed and repassed,

peering at them as at caged animals, some curiously, some in hatred and

revenge, some with fear, now and then one with pity. The session would

end, they would be taken downstairs again--the police were not yet

ready. But finally, one Saturday morning, they were taken into the

court-room and arraigned. Bostwick, the judge, heard a part of the

evidence; it was nearly noon, and court never sat on Saturday

afternoons. Bostwick and the prosecutor both were very anxious to get

away for their half-holiday. The session had been long and trying, the

morning was sultry, a summer day had fallen unexpectedly in the midst of

the spring. Bostwick was uncomfortable in his heavy clothes. He

hurried the hearing and sent them all to the workhouse for thirty days,

and fined them the costs. Marriott had realized the hopelessness of the

case from the first; even he was glad the hearing was over, glad to have

Archie off his mind.

The little trial was but a trivial incident in the life of the city;

Bostwick and the prosecutor, to whom it was but a part of the day's

work, forgot it in the zest of ordering a luncheon; the police forgot

it, excepting Kouka, who boasted to the reporters and felt important for

a day. Frisby, a little lawyer with a catarrhal voice, thought of it

long enough to be thankful that he had demanded his fee in advance from

the mother of the boy he had defended--it took her last cent and made

her go hungry over Sunday. Back on the Flats, in the shadow of the

beautiful spire of St. Francis, there were cries, Gaelic lamentations,

keening, counting of beads and prayers to the Virgin. The reporters

made paragraphs for their newspapers, writing in the flippant spirit

with which they had been taught to treat the daily tragedies of the

police court. Some people scanned the paragraphs, and life passed by on

the other side; the crowds of the city surged and swayed, and Sunday

dawned with the church-bells ringing peacefully.

The Koerner family had the news that evening from Jerry Crowley, the

policeman who had recently been assigned to that beat, his predecessor,

Miller, having been suspended for drunkenness. Crowley had had a hard

time of it ever since he came on the beat. The vicinity was German and

he was Irish, and race hatred pursued him daily with sneers, and jibes,

and insults, now and then with stones and clods. The children took

their cue from the gang at Nussbaum's; the gang made his life miserable.

Yet Crowley was a kindly Irishman, with many a jest and joke, and a

pleasant word for every one. Almost anybody he arrested could get

Crowley to let him go by begging hard enough. On the warm evenings

Koerner would sit on the stoop, and Crowley, coming by, would stop for a

dish of gossip.

"Oh, come now, Mr. Koerner," he said that Saturday night, after he had

crudely told the old German of his son's fate, "I wouldn't take it that

hard; shure an' maybe it's good 'twill be doin' the lad an' him needin'

it the way he does."

Officer Crowley was interrupted in his comforting by a racket at the

corner--the warm, soft nights were bringing the gang out, and he went

away to wage his hopeless battle with it. When he returned, old man

Koerner had gone indoors.

Gusta shared all her father's humiliation and all her mother's grief at

Archie's imprisonment. She felt that she should visit her brother in

prison, but it was a whole week before she could get away, and then on a

brilliant Sunday afternoon she went to the workhouse. The hideous

prison buildings were surrounded by a high fence, ugly in its dull red

paint; the office and the adjoining quarters where the superintendent

lived had a grass plot in which some truckling trusty had made

flower-beds to please the superintendent's wife. In the office an old

clerk, in a long black coat, received Gusta solemnly. He was sitting,

from the habit of many years, on the high stool at the desk where he

worked; ordinarily he crouched over his books in the fear that political

changes would take his job from him; now a Sunday paper, which the

superintendent and his family had read and discarded, replaced the sad

records, but he bent over this none the less timidly. After a long

while an ill-natured guard, whose face had grown particularly sinister

and vicious in the business, ordered Gusta to follow him, and led her

back into the building. Reluctantly he unlocked doors and locked them

behind her, and Gusta grew alarmed. Once, waiting for him to unlock

what proved to be a final door, he waited while a line of women,

fourteen or fifteen of them, in uniform of striped gingham, went

clattering up a spiral iron stairway; two or three of the women were

negresses. They had been down to the services some Christian people had

been holding for the inmates, preaching to them that if they believed on

Jesus they would find release, and peace, and happiness. These people,

of course, did not mean release from the workhouse, and the peace and

happiness, it seemed, could not come until the inmates died. So long as

they lived, their only prospect seemed to be unpaid work by day, bread

and molasses to eat, and a cell to sleep in at night, with iron bars

locking them in and armed men to watch them. However, the inmates

enjoyed the services because they were allowed to sing.

After the women disappeared, Gusta stood fearfully before a barred door

and looked down into a cell-house. The walls were three stories high,

and sheer from the floor upward, with narrow windows at the top. Inside

this shell of brick the cells were banked tier on tier, with dizzy

galleries along each tier. Though Gusta could see no one, she could

hear a multitude of low voices, like the humming of a bee-hive--the

prisoners, locked two in each little cell, were permitted to talk during

this hour. The place was clean, but had, of course, the institutional

odor. The guard called another guard, and between them they unlocked

several locks and threw several levers; finally a cell-door opened--and

Gusta saw Archie come forth. He wore a soiled ill-fitting suit of gray

flannel with wide horizontal stripes, and his hair had been clipped

close to his head. The sight so confused and appalled Gusta that she

could not speak, and the guard, standing suspiciously by her side to

hear all that was said, made it impossible for her to talk. The feeling

was worse than that she had had at the police station when an iron door

had thus similarly separated her from her brother.

Archie came close and took hold of the bars with both his hands and

peered at her; he asked her a few questions about things at home, and

charged her with a few unimportant messages and errands. But she could

only stand there with the tears streaming down her face. Presently the

guard ordered Archie back to his cell, and he went away, turning back

wistfully and repeating his messages in a kind of desperate wish to

connect himself with the world.

When Gusta got outside again, she determined that she would not go home,

for there the long shadow of the prison lay. She did not know where to

go or what to do, but while she was trying to decide she heard from afar

the music of a band--surely there would be distraction. So she walked

in the direction of the music. About the workhouse, as about all

prisons, were the ramshackles of squalid poverty and worse; but little

Flint Street, along which she took her way, began to pick up, and she

passed cottages, painted and prim, where workmen lived, and the people

she saw, and their many children playing in the street, were well

dressed and happy. It seemed strange to Gusta that any one should be

happy then. When suddenly she came into Eastend Avenue, she knew at

last where she was and whence the music came; she remembered that Miami

Park was not far away. The avenue was crowded with vehicles, not the

stylish kind she had been accustomed to on Claybourne Avenue, but

buggies from livery-stables, in which men drove to the road-houses up

the river, surreys with whole families crowded in them, now and then

some grocer's or butcher's delivery wagon furnished with seats and

filled with women and children. The long yellow trolley-cars that went

sliding by with incessant clangor of gongs were loaded; the only signs

of the aristocracy Gusta once had known were the occasional automobiles,

bound, like the Sunday afternoon buggy-riders, up the smooth white river

road.

Eastend Avenue ran through the park, and just before it reached that

playground of the people it was lined with all kinds of amusement

pavilions, little vaudeville shows, merry-go-rounds, tintype studios,

shooting galleries, pop-corn and lemonade stands, public dance halls

where men and girls were whirling in the waltz. On one side was a

beer-garden. All these places were going noisily, with men shouting out

the attractions inside, hand-organs and drums making a wild, barbaric

din, and in the beer-garden a German band braying out its meretricious

tunes. But at the beginning of the park a dead-line was invisibly

drawn--beyond that the city would not allow the catch-penny amusements

to go. On one side of the avenue the park sloped down to the river, on

the other it stretched into a deep grove. The glass roof of a botanical

house gleamed in the sun, and beyond, hidden among the trees, were the

zooelogical gardens, where a deer park, a bear-pit, a monkey house, and

a yard in which foxes skulked and racoons slept, strove with their

mild-mannered exhibits for the beginnings of a menagerie. And

everywhere were people strolling along the walks, lounging under the

trees, hundreds of them, thousands of them, dressed evidently in their

best clothes, seeking relief from the constant toil that kept their

lives on a monotonous level.

Gusta stood a while and gazed on the river. On the farther shore its

green banks rose high and rolled away with the imagination into woods

and fields and farms. Here and there little cat-boats moved swiftly

along, their sails white in the sun; some couples were out in rowboats.

But as Gusta looked she suddenly became self-conscious; she saw that, of

all the hundreds, she was the only one alone. Girls moved about, or

stood and talked and giggled in groups, and every girl seemed to have

some fellow with her. Gusta felt strange and out of place, and a little

bitterness rose in her heart. The band swelled into a livelier, more

strident strain, and Gusta resented this sudden burst of joyousness.

She turned to go away, but just then she saw that a young man had

stopped and was looking at her. He was a well-built young fellow, as

strong as Archie; he had dark hair and a small mustache curled upward at

the corners in a foreign way. His cheeks were ruddy; he carried a light

cane and smoked a cigar. When he saw that Gusta had noticed him he

smiled and Gusta blushed. Then he came up to her and took off his hat.

"Are you taking a walk?" he asked.

"I was going home," Gusta replied. She wondered how she could get away

without hurting the young man's feelings, for he seemed to be pleasant,

harmless and well meaning.

"It's a fine day," he said. "There's lots o' people out."

"Yes," said Gusta.

"Where 'bouts do you live?"

"On Bolt Street."

"Oh, I live out that way myself!" said the young man. "It's quite a

ways from here. Been out to see some friends?"

"Yes." Gusta hesitated. "I had an errand to do out this way."

"Don't you want to go in the park and see the zoo? There's lots of funny

animals back there." The young man pointed with his little cane down

one of the gravel walks that wound among the trees. Gusta looked, and

saw the people--young couples, women with children, and groups of young

men, sauntering that way. Then she looked at the street-cars, loaded

heavily, with passengers clinging to the running-boards; she was tempted

to go, but it was growing late.

"No, thanks," she said, "I must be going home now."

"Are you going to walk or take the car?" asked the young man.

"I'll walk, I guess," she said; and then, lest he think she had no car

fare, she added: "the cars are so crowded."

She started then, and was surprised when the young man naturally walked

along by her side, swinging his cane and talking idly to her. At first

she was at a loss whether to let him walk with her or not; she had a

natural fear, a modesty, the feminine instinct, but she did not know

just how to dismiss him. She kept her face averted and her eyes

downcast; but finally, when her fears had subsided a little, she glanced

at him occasionally; she saw that he was good-looking, and she

considered him very well dressed. He had a gold watch chain, and when

she asked him what time it was he promptly drew out a watch. Their

conversation, from being at the first quite general, soon became

personal, and before they had gone far Gusta learned that the young

man's name was Charlie Peltzer, that he was a plumber, and that

sometimes he made as much as twenty dollars a week. By the time they

parted at the corner near Gusta's home they felt very well acquainted

and had agreed to meet again.

After that they met frequently. In the evening after supper Gusta would

steal out, Peltzer would be waiting for her at the corner, and they

would stroll under the trees that were rapidly filling with leaves.

Once, passing Policeman Crowley, Gusta saw him looking at them narrowly.

There was a little triangular park not far from Gusta's home, and there

the two would sit all the evening. The moon was full, the nights were

soft and mild and warm. On Sundays they went to the park where they had

met, and now and then they danced in the public pavilion. But Gusta

never danced with any of the other men there, nor did Peltzer dance with

any of the other girls; they danced always together, looking into each

other's eyes. Now she could endure the monotony and the drudgery at

home, the children's peevishness, her mother's melancholy, her father's

querulousness. Even Archie's predicament lost its horror and its

sadness for her. She had not yet, however, told Peltzer, and she felt

ashamed of Archie, as if, in creating the possibility of compromising

her, he had done her a wrong. She went about in a dream, thinking of

Peltzer all the time, and of the wonderful thing that had brought all

this happiness into her life.

Gusta had not, however, as yet allowed Peltzer to go home with her; he

went within half a block of the house, and there, in the shadow, they

took their long farewell. But Peltzer was growing more masterful; each

night he insisted on going a little nearer, and at last one night he

clung to her, bending over her, looking into her blue eyes, his lips

almost on hers, and before they were aware they were at her door. Gusta

was aroused by Crowley's voice. Crowley was there with her father,

telling him again the one incident in all his official career that had

distinguished him for a place in the columns of the newspapers. He was

just at the climax of the thrilling incident, and they heard his voice

ring out:

"An' I kept right on toowards him, an' him shootin' at me breasht four

toimes--"

He had got up, in the excitement he so often evoked in living over that

dramatic moment again, to illustrate the action, and he saw Gusta and

Charlie. Peltzer stopped, withdrew his arm hurriedly from Gusta's

waist, and then Crowley, forgetting his story, called out:

"Oh-ho, me foine bucko!"

Then Koerner saw Gusta, and, forgetting for a moment, tried to rise to

his feet, then dropped back again.

"Who's dot feller mit you, huh? Who's dot now?" he demanded.

"Aw, tut, tut, man," said Crowley. "Shure an' the girl manes no harm at

all--an' the laad, he's a likely wan. Shure now, Misther Koerner, don't

ye be haard on them--they're that young now! An' 'tis the spring, do ye

moind--and it's well I can see the phite flower on the thorn tra in me

ould home these days!"

Gusta's heart and Peltzer's heart warmed to Crowley, but old Koerner

said:

"In mit you!"

And she slipped hurriedly indoors.

But nothing could harm her now, for the world had changed.

XV

Archie Koerner served his thirty days in the workhouse, then, because he

was in debt to the State for the costs and had no money with which to

pay the debt, he was kept in prison ten days longer, although it was

against the constitution of that State to imprison a man for debt.

Forty days had seemed a short time to Bostwick when he pronounced

sentence; had he chosen, he might have given Archie a sentence, in fine

and imprisonment, that would have kept him in the workhouse for two

years; he frequently did this with thieves. These forty days, too, had

been brief to Marriott, and to Eades, and they had been brief to

Elizabeth, who had found new happiness in the fact that Mr. Amos Hunter

had given Dick a position in the banking department of his Title and

Trust Company. These forty days, in fact, had passed swiftly for nearly

every one in the city, because they were spring days, filled with warm

sunshine by day, and soft and musical showers by night. The trees were

pluming themselves in new green, the birds were singing, and people were

happy in their release from winter; they were busied about new clothes,

with riding and driving, with plans for summer vacations and schemes for

the future; they were all imbued with the spirit of hope the spring had

brought to the world again. To Gusta, too, in her love, these days had

passed swiftly, like a hazy, golden dream.

But to Archie these forty days had not been forty days at all, but a

time of infinite duration. He counted each day as it dragged by; he

counted it when he came from his bunk in the morning; he counted it

every hour during the long day's work over the hideous bricks he could

find no joy in making; he counted it again at evening, and the last

thing before he fell asleep. It seemed that forty days would never roll

around.

They did pass finally, and a morning came when he could leave the

comrades of his misery. He felt some regret in doing this; many of them

had been kind to him, and friendships had been developed by means of

whispers and signs, but more by the silent influence of a common

suffering. He had quarreled and almost fought with some of them, for

the imprisonment had developed the beast that was in them, and had made

many of them morose, ugly, suspicious, dangerous, filling them with a

kind of moral insanity. But he forgot all these enmities in the joy of

his release, and he bade his friends good-by and wished them luck. In

the superintendent's office they gave him back his clothes, and he went

out again into the world.

It was strange to be at liberty again. His first unconscious impulse

was to take up his life where he had left it off, but he did not know

how to do this. For behind him stretched an unknown time, a blank, a

break in his existence, which refused to adjust itself to the rest of

his life; it bore no relation to that existence which was himself, his

being, and yet it was there. The world that knew no such blank or break

had gone on meanwhile and left him behind, and he could not catch up

now. He was like a man who had been unconscious and had awakened with a

blurred conception of things; it was as if he had come out of a profound

anaesthesia, to find that he had been irrevocably maimed by some

unnecessary operation in surgery.

Archie did not, of course, realize all this clearly; had he been able to

do so, he might have avoided some of the consequences. But he had a

troubled sense of change, and he was to learn it and realize it fully

only by a slow, torturing process, a bit at a time. He had the first

sensation of this change in the peculiar gleam that came into the eye of

a policeman he passed in Market Place, and he felt it, too, when, half

fearfully, he presented himself at the back door of his home. His

father's fury had long since abated, but he showed that he could not

look on Archie as he once had done, and Gusta showed it, too. Bostwick

may have thought he had sentenced Archie to forty days in prison, but he

had really sentenced him to a lifetime in prison; for the influences of

those forty days could never leave Archie now; the shadows of that

prison were ever lengthening, and they were for evermore to creep with

him wherever he went, keeping him always within their shades. He was

thereafter to be but an umbra at the feast of life.

Archie could not think of the whole matter very clearly; of the theft of

which he had been convicted he scarcely thought at all. The change that

came in the world's attitude toward him did not seem to be concerned

with that act; it was never mentioned or even suggested to him at home

or elsewhere. The thing that marked him was not the fact that he had

been a thief, but that he had been a prisoner. When he did think of the

theft, he told himself that he had paid for that; the score had been

wiped out; the world had taken its revenge on him. This revenge was

expressed by the smile that lit up the face of the grocer whose herrings

had been stolen; it had been shown in the satisfaction of the prosecutor

when the judge announced his finding; it had been expressed by the

harshness of the superintendent and the guards at the workhouse; it was

shown even by the glance of that policeman he met in the Market. The

world had wreaked its vengeance on him, and Archie felt that it should

be satisfied now.

There was but one place now where the atmosphere lacked the element of

suspicion and distrust, but one place where he was not made to feel the

barrier that separated him from other men, and that was with the gang.

The gang welcomed him with a frank heartiness; they showed almost the

same eagerness and pleasure in him that they showed in welcoming Spud

and the others. There was balm in their welcome; they asked no

questions, they drew no distinctions; to them he was the same old

Archie, only grown nearer because now he could unite with them in

experience--they all had those same gaps in their lives.

That afternoon they celebrated with cans of beer in the shade of a

lumber pile, and that night the gang went down the line. Having some

money, they were welcome in all the little saloons, and the girls in

short dresses, who stood about the bars rolling cigarettes constantly,

were glad to see them. And Archie found that no questions were asked

here, that no distinctions were made even when respected, if not

respectable, men appeared, even when the prosecutor of the police court

came along with a companion, and spent a portion of the salary these

people contributed so heavily to pay, even when the detectives came and

received the tribute money. And it dawned on Archie that here was a

little quarter of the world where he was wanted, where he was made to

feel at home, where that gap in his life made no difference. It was a

small quarter, covering scarcely more than a dozen blocks. It was

filled with miserable buildings, painted garishly and blazing with

light; there was ever the music of pianos and orchestras, and in the

saloons that were half theaters, bands blared out rapid tunes. And here

was swarming life; here, in the midst of death. But it was an important

quarter of the town; in rents and dividends and fines it contributed

largely of the money it made at such risk and sacrifice of body and of

soul, to all that was accounted good and great in the city. It helped

to pay the salaries of the mayor and the judges and the prosecutors and

the clerks and the detectives and the policemen; some of its money went

to support in idleness and luxury many dainty and exclusive women in

Claybourne Avenue, to build enormous churches, to pay for stained-glass

windows with pictures of Christ and the Magdalene, pictures that in soft

artistic hues lent a gentle religious and satisfying melancholy to the

ladies and gentlemen who sat in their pews on Sundays; it even helped to

send missionaries to far countries like Japan and China and India and

Africa, in order that the heathen who lived there might receive the

light of the Cross.

While in the workhouse Archie had occupied the same cell with a man

called Joseph Mason, which was not his name. The prison was crowded,

and it was necessary for the prisoners to double up. The cells were

narrow and had two bunks, one above and the other below--there was as

much room as there is in a section of a sleeping-car. In these cells

the men slept and ate and lived, spending all the time they did not pass

at labor in the brick-yard. During those forty days Archie became well

acquainted with Mason; they sat on their little stools all day Sunday

and talked, and when they climbed into their bunks at night they

whispered. They shared with each other their surreptitious matches and

tobacco--all they had.

This man Mason was nearly fifty years old. His close-cropped hair and

his close-shaven beard gave his head and cheeks and lips a uniform color

of dark blue; his lips were thin and compressed from a habit of

taciturnity, his eyes were small, bright and alert; at any sound he

would turn quickly and glance behind him. He had spent twenty years in

prison--ten years in Dannemora, five in Columbus, three in Allegheny and

two in Joliet. This, however, did not include the time he had been shut

up in police stations, calabooses, county jails and workhouses. In the

present instance he had been arrested for pocket-picking, and had agreed

to plead guilty if the offense were reduced to petit larceny; the

authorities had accepted his proposal, and he had been sentenced to six

months in the workhouse. He had served four and a half months of his

sentence when Archie went into the workhouse.

The only time when Mason showed any marked sense of humor was when he

told Archie of his having confessed to pocket-picking. The truth was

that he was totally innocent of this crime, and if the police had been

wise they would have known this. Mason was a Johnny Yegg, that is, an

itinerant safe-blower. As a yegg man, of course, he never had picked a

pocket, and could not have done so had he wished, for he did not know

how; and if he had known how, still he would not have done so, for the

yeggs held such crimes as picking pockets in contempt. All of the terms

he had served in states' prisons had been for blowing safes, and all of

the safes had been in rural post-offices. The technical charge was

burglary, though he was not a burglar, either, in the sense of entering

dwellings by night; this was a class of thieving left to prowlers. The

preceding fall, however, a safe had been blown in a country post-office

near the city, and Mason knew that the United States inspectors would

suspect him if they found him, and while he had been innocent of that

particular crime, he knew that this would make no difference to the

inspectors; they would willingly "job" him, as he expressed it,

justifying the act to any one who might question it--they would not need

to justify it to themselves--by arguing that if he had not blown that

particular safe he had blown others, so that the balance would be

dressed in the end. Consequently, when the police arrested him for

pocket-picking, he hailed it as a stroke of good fortune and looked on

the workhouse as an asylum. He had been a model prisoner, and had given

the authorities no trouble. He did this partly because he was a

philosophical fellow, patient and uncomplaining, partly because he did

not wish to attract attention to himself. His picture and his

measurements, taken according to the Bertillon system, were in every

police station in the land.

Mason told Archie many interesting stories of his life, of cooking over

a fire in the woods, riding on freight trains, of hang-outs in

sand-houses, and so on, and he told circumstantially of numerous crimes,

though never did he identify himself as concerned in any of them

excepting those of which he had been convicted, and in these he did not

give the names of his accomplices. Before their companionship ended he

had taught Archie the distinctions between yegg men and peter men and

gay cats, guns of various kinds, prowlers, and sure-thing men, and the

other unidentified horde of criminals who belong to none of these

classes.

He had taught Archie also many little tricks whereby a convict's lot may

be lightened--as, for instance, how to split with a pin one match into

four matches, how to pass little things from one cell to another by a

"trolley" or piece of string, how to lie on a board, and so on. But,

above all, he had set Archie the example of a patient man who took

things as they came, without question or complaint.

Archie missed Mason. He could see him sitting in the gloom of their

little cell, upright and almost never moving, talking in a low tone, his

lips, which had a streak of tobacco always on them, moving slowly,

shutting tightly after each sentence, until he had swallowed, then

deliberately he would go on. Mason's view of life interested Archie,

who, up to that time, had never thought at all, had never made any

distinctions, and so had no view of life at all. Many of Mason's views

were striking in their insight, many were childish in their lack of it;

they were curiously straightforward at times, at others astonishingly

oblique. He had a great hatred of sham and pretense, and he considered

all so-called respectable people as hypocrites. He had about the same

contempt for them that he had for the guns, who were sneaks, he said,

afraid to take chances. He had a high admiration for boldness and

courage, and a great love of adventure, and he thought that all these

qualities were best exemplified in yegg men. For the courts he had no

respect at all; his contempt was so deep-rooted that he never once

considered the possibility of their doing justice, and spoke as if it

were axiomatic that they could not do justice if they tried. He had the

same contempt for the church, although he seemed to know much about the

life of Jesus and had respect for His teachings. He called the people

who came to pray and sing on Sundays "mission stiffs"; he treated them

respectfully enough, but he told Archie that those prisoners who took an

interest in the services did so that they might secure favors and

perhaps pardons. He had known many convicts to secure their liberty in

that way, and while he gave them credit for cleverness and was not

disposed to blame them, still he did not respect them. Such convicts he

called "false alarms."

There were one or two judges before whom he had been tried that he

admired and thought to be good men. He did not blame them for the

sentences they had given him, but explained to Archie that they had to

do this as an incident of their business, and he spoke as if they might

have shared his own regret in the cruel necessity. Of all prosecutors,

however, he had a hatred; especially of Eades, of whom he seemed to have

heard much. He told Archie that as a result of Eades's severity the

thieves some day would "rip" the town.

He looked on his own occupation and spoke of it as any man might look on

his own occupation; it simply happened that that was his business. He

seemed to consider it as honest as, or at least no more dishonest than,

any other business. He had certain standards, and these he maintained.

On the whole, however, he concluded that his business hardly paid,

though it had its compensations in its adventure and in its free life.

XVI

Archie was loitering along Market Place, not sure of what he would do

that evening, but ready for any sensation chance might offer. Men were

brushing through the flapping green doors of the small saloons, talking

loudly, and swearing, many of them already drunk. Pianos were going,

and above all the din he heard the grating of a phonograph grinding out

the song some minstrel once had sung to a banjo; the banjo notes were

realistic, but the voice of the singer floated above the babel of voices

like the mere ghost of a voice, inhuman and not alive, as perhaps the

singer might not then have been alive. Archie, wondering where the gang

was, suddenly met Mason. The sight gave him real pleasure.

"Hello, Joe!" he cried as he seized Mason's hand.

Mason smiled faintly, but Archie's joy made him happy.

"Je's," said Archie, "I'm glad to see you--it makes me feel better.

When 'd you get out?"

"This morning," Mason replied. "Which way?"

"Oh, anywhere," said Archie. "Where you goin'?"

"Up to Gibbs's. Want to go 'long?"

Archie's heart gave a little start; to go to Danny Gibbs's under Mason's

patronage would be a distinction. The evening opened all at once with

sparkling possibilities.

"An old friend o' mine's there," Mason explained as they walked along up

Kentucky Street. "He's just got out of a shooting scrape; he croaked

that fellow Benny Moon. Remember?"

Gibbs's place was scarcely more than a block away; it displayed no sign;

a three-story building of brick, a side door, and a plate-glass window

in front; a curtain hiding half the window, a light above--that was all.

Mason entered with an assurance that impressed Archie, who had never

before felt the need of assurance in entering a saloon. He looked

about; it was like any other saloon, a long bar and a heavy mirror that

reflected the glasses and the bottles of green and yellow liqueurs

arranged before it. At one table sat a tattered wreck of a man, his

head bowed on his forearms crossed on the table, fast asleep--one of the

many broken lives that found with Danny Gibbs a refuge. Over the mirror

behind the bar hung an opium pipe, long since disused, serving as a

relic now, the dreams with which it had once relieved the squalor and

remorse of a wasted life long since broken.

At Mason's step, however, there was a stir in the room behind the

bar-room, and a woman entered. She walked heavily, as if her years and

her flesh were burdensome; her face was heavy, tired and expressionless.

She was plainly making for the bar, as if to keep alive the pretense of

a saloon, but when she saw Mason she stopped, her face lighted up,

becoming all at once matronly and pleasant, and she smiled as she came

forward, holding out a hand.

"Why, Joe," she said, "is that you? When did you get out?"

"This morning," he said. "Where's Dan?"

"He's back here; come in," and she turned and led the way.

Mason followed, drawing Archie behind him, and they entered the room

behind the bar-room. The atmosphere changed--the room was light, it was

lived in, and the four men seated at a round bare table gave to the

place its proper character. Three of the men had small tumblers filled

with whisky before them, the fourth had none; he sat tilted back in his

chair, his stiff hat pulled down over his eyes, his hands sunk in the

pockets of his trousers; his fat thighs flattened on the edge of his

chair. He was dressed in modest gray, and might have been taken for a

commonplace business man. He lifted his blue eyes quickly and glanced

at the intruders; his face was round and cleanly shaved, save for a

little blond mustache that curled at the corners of his mouth. His

hair, of the same color as his mustache, glistened slightly at the

temples, where it was touched by gray. This man had no whisky glass

before him--he did not drink, but he sat there with an air of presiding

over this little session, plainly vested with some authority--sat,

indeed, as became Danny Gibbs, the most prominent figure in the under

world.

Gibbs's place was only ostensibly a saloon; in reality it was a

clearing-house for thieves, where accounts were settled with men who had

been robbed under circumstances that made it advisable for them to keep

the matter secret, and where balances were adjusted with the police.

All the thieves of the higher class--those who traveled on railway

trains and steamboats, fleecing men in games of cards, those of that

class who were well-dressed, well-informed, pleasant-mannered,

apparently respectable, who passed everywhere for men of affairs, and

stole enormous sums by means of a knowledge of human nature that was

almost miraculous--were friends of Gibbs. He negotiated for them; he

helped them when they were in trouble; when they were in the city they

lived at his house--sometimes they lived on him. The two upper floors

of his establishment, fitted like a hotel, held many strange and

mysterious guests. Gibbs maintained the same relation with the guns,

the big-mitt men, and sneak-thieves, and he bore the same relation to

the yegg men and to the prowlers. By some marvelous tact he kept apart

all these classes, so different, so antipathetic, so jealous and

suspicious of one another, and when they happened to meet he kept them

on terms. There never were loud words or trouble at Gibbs's. To all

these classes of professional criminals he was a kind of father, an

ever-ready friend who never forgot or deserted them. When they were in

jail he sent lawyers to them, he provided them with delicacies, he paid

their fines. Sometimes he obtained pardons and commutations for them,

for he was naturally influential in politics and maintained relations

with Ralph Keller, the boss of the city, that were as close as those he

maintained with the police. He could provide votes for primaries, and he

could do other things. The police never molested him, though now and

then they threatened to, and then he was forced to increase the tribute

money, already enormous. A part of his understanding with the police, a

clause in the _modus vivendi_, was that certain friends of Gibbs's were

to be harbored in the city on condition that they committed no crimes

while there; now and then when a crime was committed in the city, it

would be made the excuse by the police for further extortion. The

detectives came and went as freely at Gibbs's as the guns, the yeggs,

the prowlers, the sure-thing men, the gamblers and bunco men.

"Ah, Joe," said Gibbs, glancing at Mason.

"Dan," said Mason, as he took a chair beside Gibbs. They had spoken in

low, quiet tones, yet somehow the simplicity of their greeting suggested

a friendship that antedated all things of the present, stretching back

into other days, recalling ties that had been formed at times and under

circumstances that were lost in the past and forgotten by every one,

even the police. However well the other three might have known Gibbs,

they delicately implied that their relation could not be so close as

that of Joe Mason, and they were silent for an instant, as if they would

pay a tribute to it. But the silence held, losing all at once its

deference to the friendship of Gibbs and Mason, and taking on a quality

of constraint, cold and repellent, plainly due to Archie's presence.

Archie felt this instantly, and Mason felt it, for he knew the ways of

his kind, and, turning to Gibbs, he said:

"A friend of mine; met him in the boob." And then he said: "Mr. Gibbs,

let me introduce Mr. Koerner."

Gibbs looked at Archie keenly and gave him his hand. Then Mason

introduced Archie to the three other men--Jackson, Mandell and Keenan.

Gibbs, meanwhile, turned to his wife, who had taken a chair against the

wall and folded her arms.

"Get Joe and his friend something to drink, Kate," he commanded. The

woman rose wearily, asked them what they wished to drink, and went into

the bar-room for the whisky glasses.

The little company had accepted Archie tentatively on Mason's assurance,

but they resumed their conversation guardedly and without spontaneity.

Mason, however, gave it a start again when he turned to Jackson and

said:

"Well, Curly, I read about your trouble. I was glad you wasn't ditched.

I thought for a while there that you was the fall guy, all right."

Jackson laughed without mirth and flecked the ash from his cigarette.

"Yes, Joe, I come through."

"He sprung you down there, too!" said Mason with more surprise than

Archie had ever known him to show. "I figured you'd waive, anyhow."

"Well, I wanted a show-down, d'ye see?" said Jackson. "I knew they

couldn't hold me on the square."

"Didn't they know anything?"

"Who, them chuck coppers?" Jackson sneered. "Not a thing; they guessed

a whole lot, and when I got out they asked if I'd object to be mugged."

Jackson was showing his perfect teeth in a smile that attracted Archie.

"They'd treated me so well, I was ready to oblige them--d'ye see?--and I

let 'em--so they took my Bertillon. I didn't think one more would hurt

much."

Jackson looked down at the table and smiled introspectively. The smile

won Archie completely. He was looking at Jackson with admiration in his

eyes, and Jackson, suddenly noticing him, conveyed to Archie subtly a

sense of his own pleasure in the boy's admiration.

"Well, I tell you, Curly," Mason was going on. "You done right--that

fink got just what was comin' to him. You showed the nerve, too. I

couldn't 'ave waited half that long. But I didn't think you'd stand a

show with Bostwick. I knowed you'd get off in front of a jury, but I

had my misdoubts about that fellow Eades. God! he's a cold proposition!

But in front of Bostwick--!" Mason slowly and incredulously shook his

head, then ended by swallowing his little glassful of whisky suddenly.

"Well, you see, Joe," Jackson began, speaking in a high, shrill voice,

as if it were necessary to convince Mason, "there was nothin' to it.

There was no chance for the bulls to job me on this thing," and he went

on to explain, as if he had to vindicate his exercise of judgment in a

delicate situation, seeming to forget how completely the outcome had

justified it.

Archie had scarcely noticed Keenan and Mandell; once he had wrested his

eyes from Gibbs, he had not taken them from Jackson. He had been

puzzled at first, but now, in a flash, he recognized in Jackson the man

who had shot Moon.

"You see, Joe," Mandell suddenly spoke up--his voice was a rumbling bass

in harmony with his heavy jaws--"it was a clear case of self-defense.

The shamming-pusher starts out to clean up down the line, he unsloughs

up there by Connie's place on Caldwell, and musses a wingy, and then he

goes across the street and bashes a dinge; he goes along that way,

bucklin' into everybody he meets, until he meets Curly, who was standing

down there by Sailor Goin's drum chinnin' Steve Noonan--he goes up to

them and begins. Curly mopes off; he dogs him down to Cliff Decker's

corner, catches up and gives Curly a clout in the gash--"

Mason was listening intently, leaning forward, his keen eyes fixed on

Mandell's. He was glad, at last, to have the story from one he could

trust to give the details correctly; theretofore he had had nothing but

the accounts in the newspapers, and he had no more confidence in the

newspapers than he had in the courts or the churches, or any other

institution of the world above him. Archie listened, too, finding a new

fascination in the tale, though he had had it already from one of the

gang, Pat Whalen, who had been fortunate enough to see the tragedy, and

had had the distinction of testifying in the case. Whalen had seen

Moon, a bartender with pugilistic ambitions, make an unprovoked assault

on Jackson, follow him to the corner, and knock him down; he had seen

Jackson stagger to his feet, draw his revolver and back away. He had

told Archie how deathly white Jackson's face had gone as he backed,

backed, a whole block, a crowd following, and Moon coming after, cursing

and swearing, taunting Jackson, daring him to shoot, telling him he was

"four-flushing with that smoke-wagon," warning him to make a good job

when he did shoot, for he intended to make him eat his gun. He had told

how marvelously cool Jackson was; he had said in a low voice, "I don't

want to shoot you--I just want you to let me alone." And Whalen had

described how Moon had flung off his coat, how bystanders had tried to

restrain him, how he had rushed on, how Jackson had gone into the vacant

lot by old Jim Peppers's shanty, coming out on the other side, until he

was met by Eva Clason, who tried to open a gate and let Jackson into the

brothel she called home. Whalen had given Archie a sense of the

ironical fate that that day had led Eva's piano player to nail up the

gate so that the chickens she had bought could not get out of the yard.

The gate would not open and Moon was on him again; and Jackson backed

and backed, clear around to the sidewalk on Caldwell Street, and then,

when he had completed the circuit, Moon had sprung at him. Then the

revolver had cracked, the crowd closed in, and there lay Moon on the

sidewalk, dead--and Jackson looking down at him. Then the cries for

air, the patrol wagon, and the police.

As Mandell told the story now, Archie kept his eyes on Jackson. At the

point where he had said, "I don't want to shoot you," Jackson's eyes

grew moist with tears; he blinked and knocked the ashes from his

cigarette with the nail of his little finger, sprinkling them on the

floor. When Mandell had done, Mason looked up at Jackson.

"Well, Curly," he said, "you had the right nerve."

"Nerve!" said Mandell. "I guess so!"

"Nerve!" repeated Keenan. "He had enough for a whole mob!"

"Ach!" said Jackson, twisting away from them on his chair.

"I'd 'a' let him have it when he first bashed me," said Keenan.

"Yes!" cried Jackson suddenly, rising and catching his chair by the

back. "Yes--and been settled for it! I didn't want to do it; I didn't

want to get into trouble. You always was that way, Jimmy."

Archie looked at Curly Jackson as he stood with an arm outstretched

toward Keenan; his figure was tall and straight and slender, and as he

noted the short brown curls that gave him his name, the tanned cheeks,

the attitude in which he held himself, something confused Archie, some

thought he could not catch--some idea that evaded him, coming near till

he was just on the point of grasping it, then eluding him, like a name

one tries desperately to recall.

"I didn't have my finger on the trigger," Jackson went on, speaking in

his high, shrill, excited voice. "I held it on the trigger-guard all

the time."

And then suddenly it came to Archie--that bronzed skin, that set of the

shoulders, that trimness, that alertness, that coolness, Jackson could

have got nowhere but in the army. He had been a soldier--what was more,

he had been a regular. And Archie felt something like devotion for him.

"Sit down, Curly," said Gibbs, and Jackson sank into his chair. A

minute later Jackson turned to Mason and said quietly:

"You see, Joe, I don't like to talk about it--nor to think of it. I

didn't want to kill him, God knows. I don't see anything in it to get

swelled about and be the wise guy."

XVII

Curly Jackson sat for a moment idly making little circles on the

polished surface of the table with the moist bottom of his glass; then

abruptly he rose and left the room. The others followed him with their

eyes. Archie was deeply interested. He longed to talk to Jackson,

longed to show him how he admired him, but he was timid in this company,

and felt that it became him best to remain quiet. But Jackson's conduct

in the tragedy had fired Archie's imagination, and Jackson was as much

the hero in his eyes as he was in the eyes of his companions. And then

Archie thought of his own skill with the carbine and the revolver, and

he wished he could display it to these men; perhaps in that way he could

attract their notice and gain their approval.

"He doesn't want to talk about it," said Mason when Jackson had

disappeared.

"No," said Gibbs. "Let him alone."

Jackson was gone but a few minutes, and then he returned and quietly

took his seat at the table. They talked of other things then, but

Archie could understand little they said, for they spoke in a language

that was almost wholly unintelligible to him. But he sat and listened

with a bewildering sense of mystery that made their conversation all the

more fascinating. What they said conveyed to him a sense of a wild,

rough, dangerous life that was full of adventure and a kind of low

romance, and Archie felt that he would like to know these men better; if

possible, to be one of them, and at the thought his heart beat faster,

as at the sudden possibility of a new achievement.

As they talked voices were heard in the bar-room outside, and presently

a huge man stood in the door-way. He was fully six feet in height, and

blond. His face was red, and he was dressed in dark gray clothes, a

blue polka-dotted cravat giving his attire its one touch of color. He

reminded Archie of some one, and he tried to think who that person was.

"Oh, Dan," the man in the doorway said, "come here a minute."

Gibbs went into the bar-room.

"Who's that?" asked Mandell.

"He's a swell, all right," said Keenan.

The three, Mandell, Keenan and Jackson, looked at Mason as if he could

tell. But Archie suddenly remembered.

"He looks like an army officer," he said, speaking his thought aloud.

"What do you know about army officers, young fellow?" demanded Jackson.

The others turned, and Archie blushed. But he did not propose to have

Jackson put him down.

"Well," he said with spirit, "I know something--I was in the regular

army three years."

"What regiment?" Jackson fixed Archie with his blue eyes, and there

seemed to be just a trace of concern in their keen, searching glance.

"The twelfth cavalry," said Archie. "I served in the Philippines."

"Oh!" said Jackson, as if relieved, and he released Archie from his

look. Archie felt relieved, too, and went on:

"He looks just like a colonel in the English army I saw at Malta. Our

transport stopped there."

"It's Lon McDougall," said Mason when Archie had finished. "He's a

big-mitt man."

The others turned away with an effect of lost interest and something

like a sneer.

"I suppose there's a lot o' those guns out there," said Keenan.

"A mob come in this afternoon," said Mason; "they're working eastward

out of Chicago with the rag."

"Well, let's make a get-away," said Keenan, unable to conceal a yegg

man's natural contempt of the guns.

They all got up, Archie with them, and went out. In the bar-room five

men were standing; they were all men of slight figure, dressed well and

becomingly, and with a certain alert, sharp manner. They cast quick,

shifty glances at the men who came out of the back room, but there was

no recognition between them. These men, as Mason had said, were all

pickpockets; they had come to town that afternoon, and naturally

repaired at once to Gibbs's. They had come in advance of a circus that

was to be in the city two days later, and were happy in the hope of

being able to work under protection. They knew Cleary as a chief of

police with whom an arrangement could be made, and McDougall, who had

come in to work on circus day himself, had kindly agreed to secure them

this protection. At that moment, indeed, McDougall was whispering with

Gibbs at the end of the bar; they were discussing the "fixing" of

Cleary.

The pickpockets had been talking rather excitedly. They were glad at the

prospect of the circus, and, in common with the rest of humanity, they

were glad that spring had come, partly from a natural human love of this

time of joy and hope, partly because the spring was the beginning of the

busy season. They could do more in summer, when people were stirring

about, just as the yegg men could do more in winter, when the nights

were long and windows were closed and people kept indoors. But at the

appearance of Mason and his friends, one of the pickpockets gave the

thieves' cough, and they were silent. McDougall glanced about, then

resumed his low talk with Gibbs.

"Give us a little drink, Kate," said Jackson, who seemed to have money.

As they stood there pouring out their whisky, a little girl with a tray

of flowers entered the saloon, and the pickpockets instantly bought all

her carnations and adorned themselves. And then a man entered, a small

man, with a wry, comical face and a twisted, deformed figure; his left

hand was curled up as if he had been paralyzed on that side from his

youth. But once behind the big walnut screen which shut off the view

from the street, he straightened suddenly and became as well formed as

any one. His comedian's face broke into a smile, and he greeted every

one there familiarly; he knew them all--Gibbs and McDougall, the

pickpockets, and the yegg men, and he burst into loud congratulations

when he saw Jackson.

"Well, Curly," he said, "you gave that geezer all that was coming to

him! You--"

"Cheese it, Jimmy," said Jackson. "I don't want to hear any more about

that."

Jackson spoke with such authority that the little fellow stepped back,

the smile that was on his lips faded suddenly, and he joined the

pickpockets. The little fellow was a grubber; he could throw his body

instantly into innumerable hideous shapes of deformity; he had not the

courage to be a thief, was afraid to sleep in a barn, and so had become

a beggar.

As Mason bade Gibbs good night and went out he was laughing, and Archie

had not often seen him laugh. On the way down the street he told stories

of Jimmy's abilities as a beggar, and they all laughed, all save

Jackson, who was gloomy and morose and walked along shrouded in a kind

of gloom that impressed Archie powerfully.

And now new days dawned for Archie--days of association with Mason,

Jackson, Keenan and Mandell. The Market Place gang had no standing among

professional criminals, though it had furnished recruits, and now Archie

became a recruit, and soon approved himself. It was not long until he

could speak their language; he called a safe a "peter" and nitroglycerin

"soup," a freight-train was a "John O'Brien"; he spoke of a man

convicted as a "fall man", conveying thus subtly a sense of vicarious

sacrifice; he called policemen "bulls", and jails "pogeys"; the

penitentiary where all these men had been was the "stir", and the little

packages of buttered bread and pie that were handed out to them from

kitchen doors were "lumps". And he learned the distinctions between the

classes of men who defy society and its laws; he knew what gay cats

were, and guns and dips, lifters, moll-buzzers, hoisters, tools,

scratchers, stalls, damper-getters, housemen, gopher-men, peter-men,

lush-touchers, super-twisters, penny-weighters, and so forth. And after

that he was seen at home but seldom; his absences grew long and

mysterious.

XVIII

Elizabeth did not go often to the Country Club, and almost never for any

pleasure she herself could find; now and then she went with her father,

in order to lure him out of doors; but to-day she had come with Dick,

who wanted some fitting destination for his new touring car. She was

finding on a deserted end of the veranda a relief from the summer heat

that for a week had smothered the city. A breeze was blowing off the

river, and she lay back languidly in her wicker chair and let it play

upon her brow. In her lap lay an open book, but she was not reading it

nor meditating on it; she held it in readiness to ward off interruption;

her reputation as a reader of books, while it made her formidable to

many and gave her an unpopularity that was more and more grieving her

mother, had its compensations--people would not often intrude upon a

book. She looked off across the river. On its smooth surface tiny

sail-boats were moving; on the opposite bank there was the picturesque

windmill of a farm-house, white against the bright green. The slender

young oak trees were rustling in the wind; the links were dotted with

players in white, and the distant flags and fluttering guidons that

marked hidden putting greens. Then suddenly Marriott was before her.

He had come in from the links, and he stood now bareheaded, glowing from

his exercise, folding his arms on the veranda rail. His forearms were

blazing red from their first burning of the season, and his nose was

burned red, giving him a merry look that made Elizabeth smile.

"My! but you're burned!" she exclaimed.

"Am I?" said Marriott, pleased.

"Yes--like a mower," she added, remembering some men working in a field

that had fled past them as they came out in the automobile. She

remembered she had fancied the men burned brown as golfers, and she had

some half-formed notion of a sentence she might turn at the expense of a

certain literary school that viewed life thus upside down. She might

have gone on then and talked it over with Marriott, but her brain was

too tired; she could moralize just then no further than to say:

"You don't deserve to be burned as a mower--your work isn't as hard."

"No," said Marriott, "it isn't work at all--it's exercise; it's a

substitute for the work I should be doing." A look of disgust came to

his face.

She did not wish then to talk seriously; she was trying to forget

problems, and she and Marriott were always discussing problems.

"It's absurd," Marriott was saying. "I do this to get the exercise I

ought to get by working, by producing something--the exercise is the

end, not an incident of the means. You don't see any of these farmers

around here playing golf. They're too tired--"

"Gordon," said Elizabeth, "I'm going away."

"Where to?" he asked, looking up suddenly.

"To Europe," she said.

"Europe! Why, when? You must have decided hurriedly."

"Yes, the other night after I came home from Mr. Parrish's--we decided

rather quickly--or papa decided for us."

"Well!" Marriott exclaimed again. "That's fine!"

He looked away toward the first tee, where his caddie was waiting for

him. He beckoned, and the boy came with his bag.

"Tell Mr. Phillips I'll not play any more--I'll see him later."

The caddie took up the bag and went lazily away, stopping to take

several practice swings with one of Marriott's drivers. The boy was

always swinging this club in the hope that Marriott would give it to

him.

Marriott placed his hands on the rail, sprang over it, and drew up a

chair.

"Well, this is sudden," he said, "but it's fine for you." He took out a

cigarette. "How did it happen?"

"Do you want the real reason?" she asked.

"Of course; I've a passion for the real."

"I'm going in order to get away."

Marriott was sheltering in his palms a match for his cigarette. He

looked up suddenly, the cigarette still between his lips.

"Away from what?"

"Oh, from--everything!" She waved her hands despairingly. Marriott did

not understand.

"That's it," she said, looking him in the eyes. He saw that she was

very serious. He lighted his cigarette, and flung away the match that

was just beginning to burn his fingers.

"I'm going to run away; I'm going to forget for a whole summer. I'm

going to have a good time. When I come back in the fall I'm going to

the Charity Bureau and do some work, but until then--"

"Who's going with you?" asked Marriott. He had thought of other things

to say, but decided against them.

"Mama."

"And your father?"

"Oh, he can't go. He and Dick will stay at home."

"Then you won't shut up the house?"

"No, we'll let the maids go, but we've got Gusta Koerner to come in

every day and look after things. I'm glad for her sake--and ours. We

can trust her."

"I should think Dick would want to go."

"No, he has this new automobile now, and he says, too, that he can't

leave the bank." She smiled as she thought of the seriousness with

which Dick was regarding his new duties.

"Then you'll not go to Mackinac?"

"No, we'll close the cottage this summer. Papa doesn't want to go there

without us, and--"

"But Dick will miss his yacht."

"Oh, the yacht has been wholly superseded in his affections by the

auto."

"Well," said Marriott, "I'll not go north myself then. I had thought of

going up and hanging around, but now--"

She looked to see if he were in earnest.

"Really, I'm not as excited over the prospect of going to Europe as I

should be," said Elizabeth with a little regret in her tone. "I haven't

been in Europe since I graduated, and I've been looking forward to going

again--"

"Oh, you'll have a great time," Marriott interrupted.

She leaned back and Marriott eyed her narrowly; he saw that her look was

weary.

"Well, you need a rest. It was such a long, hard winter."

Elizabeth did not reply. She looked away across the river and Marriott

followed her gaze; the sky in the west was darkening, the afternoon had

grown sultry.

"Gordon," she said presently, "I want you to do something for me."

His heart leaped a little at her words.

"Anything you say," he answered.

"Won't you"--she hesitated a moment--"won't you look after Dick a little

this summer? Just keep an eye on him, don't you know?"

Marriott laughed, and then he grew sober. He realized that he, perhaps,

understood the seriousness that was behind her request better than she

did, but he said nothing, for it was all so difficult.

"Oh, he doesn't need any watching," he said, by way of reassuring her.

"You will understand me, I'm sure." She turned her gray eyes on him.

"I think it is a critical time with him. I don't know what he does--I

don't want to know; I don't mean that you are to pry about, or do

anything surreptitious, or anything of that sort. You know, of course;

don't you?"

"Why, certainly," he said.

"But I have felt--you see," she scarcely knew how to go about it; "I

have an idea that if he could have a certain kind of influence in his

life, something wholesome--I think you could supply that."

Marriott was moved by her confidence; he felt a great affection for her

in that instant.

"It's good in you, Elizabeth," he said, and he lingered an instant in

pronouncing the syllables of her name, "but you really overestimate.

Dick's all right, but he's young. I'm not old, to be sure; but he'd

think me old."

"I can see that would be in the way," she frankly admitted. "I don't

know just how it could be done; perhaps it can't be done at all."

"And then, besides all that," Marriott went on, "I don't know of any

good I could do him. I don't know that there is anything he really

needs more than we all need."

"Oh, yes there is," she insisted. "And there is much you could give

him. Perhaps it would bore you--"

He protested.

"Oh, I know!" she said determinedly. "We can be frank with each other,

Gordon. Dick is a man only in size and the clothes he wears; he's still

a child--a good, kind-hearted, affectionate, thoughtless child. The

whole thing perplexes me and it has perplexed papa--you might as well

know that. I have tried, and I can do nothing. He doesn't care for

books, and somehow when I prescribe books and they fail, or are not

accepted, I'm at the end of my resources. I have been trying to think

it all out, but I can't. I know that something is wrong, but I can't

tell you what it is. I only know that I _feel_ it, and that it troubles

me and worries me--and that I am tired." Then, as if he might

misunderstand, she went on with an air of haste: "I don't mean

necessarily anything wrong in Dick himself, but something wrong in--oh,

I don't know what I mean!"

She lifted her hand in a little gesture of despair.

"I feel somehow that the poor boy has had no chance in the world--though

he has had every advantage and opportunity." Her face lighted up

instantly with a kind of pleasure. "That's it!" she exclaimed. "You

see"--it was all clear to her just then, or would be if she could put

the thought into words before she lost it--"there is nothing for him to

do; there is no work for him, no necessity for his working at all. This

new place he has in the Trust Company--he seems happy and important in

it just now, but after all it doesn't seem to me real; he isn't actually

needed there; he got the place just because Mr. Hunter is a friend of

papa." The thought that for an instant had seemed on the point of being

posited was nebulous again. "Don't you understand?" she said, turning

to him for help.

"I think I do," said Marriott. His brows were contracted and he was

trying to grasp her meaning.

"It's hard to express," Elizabeth went on. "I think I mean that Dick

would be a great deal better off if he did not have a--rich father."

She hesitated before saying it, a little embarrassed. "If he had to

work, if he had his own way to make in the world--"

"It is generally considered a great blessing to have a rich father,"

said Marriott.

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "it is. I've heard that very word used--in

church, too. But with Dick"--she went back to the personal aspect of

the question, which seemed easier--"what is his life? Last summer, up

at the island, it was the yacht--with a hired skipper to do the real

work. This summer it's the touring-car; it's always some sensation,

something physical, something to kill time with--and what kind of

conception of life is that?"

She turned and looked at him with' a little arch of triumph in her

brows, at having attained this expression of her thought.

"We all have a conception of life that is more or less confused,"

Marriott generalized. "That is, when we have any conception at all."

"Of course," said Elizabeth, "I presume Dick's conception is as good as

mine; and that his life is quite as useful. My life has been every bit

as objective--I have a round of little duties--teas and balls and

parties, and all that sort of thing, of course. I've been sheltered,

like all girls of my class; but poor Dick--he's exposed, that is the

difference."

She was silent for a while. Marriott had not known before how deep her

thought had gone.

"I'm utterly useless in the world," she went on, "and I'm sick of it!

Sick of it!" She had grown vehement, and her little fists clenched in

her lap, until the knuckles showed white.

"Do you know what I've a notion of doing?" she said.

"No; what?"

"I've a notion to go and work in a factory, say half a day, and give

some poor girl a half-holiday."

"But you'd take her wages from her," said Marriott.

"Oh, I'd give her the wages."

Marriott shook his head slowly, doubtingly.

"I know it's impractical," Elizabeth went on. "Of course, I'd never do

it. Why, people would think I'd gone crazy! Imagine what mama would

say!"

She smiled at the absurdity.

"No," she said, "I'll have to go on, and lead my idle, useless life.

That's what it is, Gordon." He saw the latent fires of indignation and

protest leap into her eyes. "It's this life--this horrible, false,

insane life! That's what it is! The poor boy is beside himself with

it, and he doesn't know it. There is no place for him, nothing for him

to do; it's the logic of events."

He was surprised to see such penetration in her.

"I've been thinking it out," she hurried to explain. "I've suffered from

it myself. I've felt it for a long time, without understanding it, and

I don't understand it very well now, but I'm beginning to. Of what use

am I in the world? Not a bit--there isn't a single thing I can do. All

this whole winter I've been going about to a lot of useless affairs,

meeting and chattering with a lot of people who have no real life at

all--who are of no more use in the world than I. I'm wearing myself out

at it--and here I am, glad that the long, necessary waste of time is

over--tired and sick, of this--this--sofa-pillow existence!" She

thumped a silken pillow that lay on a long wicker divan beside her,

thumped it viciously and with a hatred.

"Sometimes I feel that I'd like to leave the town and never see anybody

in it again!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Don't you?"

"Yes--but--"

"But what?"

"But is there any place where we could escape it all?"

"There must be some place--some place where we know no one, so that no

one's cares could be our cares, where we could be mere disinterested

spectators and sit aloof, and observe life, and not feel that it was any

concern of ours at all. That's what I want. I'd like to escape this

horrible ennui."

"Well, the summer's here and we can have our vacations. Of course," he

added whimsically, "the Koerners will have no vacation."

"Gordon, don't you ever dare to mention the Koerners again!"

XIX

A few days later Eades and Marriott stood on a step at the Union

Station, and watched the majestic Limited pull out for the east. The

white-haired engineer in his faded blue jumper looked calmly down from

the high window of his cab, the black porters grinned in the vestibule,

the elderly conductor carrying his responsibilities seriously and

unaffectedly, swung gracefully aboard, his watch in his hand, and there,

on the observation platform, stood Elizabeth, very pretty in her gray

gown and the little hat with the violets, Eades's flowers in one hand,

Marriott's book in the other, waving her adieux. They watched her out

of sight, and then Ward, standing beside them, sighed heavily.

"Well," he said, "it'll be lonesome now, with everybody out of town."

They waited for Dick, who alone of all of them had braved the high

corporate authority at the gate, and gone with the travelers to their

train. He came, and they went through the clamorous station to the

street, where Dick's automobile was waiting, shaking as if it would

shake itself to pieces. They rode down town in solemn silence. Eades

and Marriott, indeed, had had little to say; during the strain of the

parting moments with Elizabeth they had been stiff and formal with each

other.

"I hope to get away myself next week," said Eades, "The town will soon

be empty."

The city day was drawing to a close. Forge fires were glowing in the

foundries they passed. Through the gloom within they could see the

workmen, stripped like gunners to the waist, their moist, polished skins

glowing in the fierce glare. They passed noisy machine-shops whence

machinists glanced out at them. In some of the factories bevies of

girls were thronging the windows, calling now and then to the workmen,

who, for some reason earlier released from toil, were already trooping

by on the sidewalk. In the crowded streets great patient horses nodded

as they easily drew the empty trucks that had borne such heavy loads all

day; their drivers were smoking pipes, greeting one another, and

whistling or singing; one of them in the camaraderie of toil had taken

on a load of workmen, to haul them on their homeward way. The

street-cars were filled with men whose faces showed the grime their

hasty washing had not removed.

Suddenly whistles blew, then there was a strange silence. Something

like a sigh went up from all that quarter of the town.

The automobile was tearing through the tenderloin with its

gaudily-painted saloons and second-hand stores sandwiched between. Old

clothes fluttered above the sidewalk, and violins, revolvers,

boxing-gloves and bits of jewelry, the trash and rubbish of wasted,

feverish lives showed in the windows. Fat Jewish women sat in the

doorways of pawn-shops, their swarthy children playing on the dirty

sidewalk. In the swinging green doors of saloons stood bartenders; and

everywhere groups of men and women, laughing, joking, haggling,

scuffling and quarreling. Now and then girls with their tawdry finery

tripped down from upper rooms, stood a moment in the dark, narrow

doorways, looked up and down the street, and then suddenly went forth.

In some of the cheap theaters, the miserable tunes that never ended, day

or night, were jingling from metallic pianos. They passed on into the

business district. Shops were closing, the tall office buildings, each a

city in itself, were pouring forth their human contents; the sidewalks

were thronged--everywhere life, swarming, seething life, spawned out

upon the world.