Jimmie and the old woman listened long in the hall. Above themuffled roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies atnight, the thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingledwith the sound of varied hoarse shoutings in the street and therattling of wheels over cobbles, they heard the screams of thechild and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning anda subdued bass muttering.

The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who coulddon, at will, an expression of great virtue. She possessed a smallmusic-box capable of one tune, and a collection of "God bless yehs"pitched in assorted keys of fervency. Each day she took a positionupon the stones of Fifth Avenue, where she crooked her legs underher and crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol. She receiveddaily a small sum in pennies. It was contributed, for the mostpart, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity.

Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, thegnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexteritybeneath her cloak. When she was arrested she had cursed the ladyinto a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted fromrheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policemanwhose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said:"The police, damn 'em."

"Eh, Jimmie, it's cursed shame," she said. "Go, now, like a dearan' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehscan sleep here."

Jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed.He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar.Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as highas his arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down and take them.Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left.

In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure.It was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs.

"Give me deh can. See?" said the man, threateningly.

"Ah, come off! I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud bedirt teh swipe it. See?" cried Jimmie.

The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped itin both hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to theunder edge and tilted his head. His hairy throat swelled until itseemed to grow near his chin. There was a tremendous gulpingmovement and the beer was gone.

The man caught his breath and laughed. He hit his son on thehead with the empty pail. As it rolled clanging into the street,Jimmie began to scream and kicked repeatedly at his father's shins.

"Look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled. "Deh ol'woman 'ill be raisin' hell."

He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did notpursue. He staggered toward the door.

"I'll club hell outa yeh when I ketch yeh," he shouted, anddisappeared.

During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinkingwhiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "My homereg'lar livin' hell! Damndes' place! Reg'lar hell! Why do I comean' drin' whisk' here thish way? 'Cause home reg'lar livin' hell!"

Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warilyup through the building. He passed with great caution the door ofthe gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.

He could hear his mother moving heavily about among thefurniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice,occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father,who, Jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.

"Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'? I'll break her jaw," she suddenly bellowed.

The man mumbled with drunken indifference. "Ah, wha' dehhell. W'a's odds? Wha' makes kick?"

"Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the womanin supreme wrath.

The husband seemed to become aroused. "Go teh hell," hethundered fiercely in reply. There was a crash against the doorand something broke into clattering fragments. Jimmie partiallysuppressed a howl and darted down the stairway. Below he pausedand listened. He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks,confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging. With all was thecrash of splintering furniture. The eyes of the urchin glared infear that one of them would discover him.

Curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered commentspassed to and fro. "Ol' Johnson's raisin' hell agin."

Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitantsof the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then hecrawled upstairs with the caution of an invader of a panther den. Sounds of labored breathing came through the broken door-panels. He pushed the door open and entered, quaking.

A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the crackedand soiled plastering, and the overturned and broken furniture.

In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. In onecorner of the room his father's limp body hung across the seatof a chair.

The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread ofawakening his parents. His mother's great chest was heavingpainfully. Jimmie paused and looked down at her. Her face wasinflamed and swollen from drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eye-lids that had brown blue. Her tangled hair tossed in waves overher forehead. Her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictivehatred that it had, perhaps, borne during the fight. Her bare,red arms were thrown out above her head in positions of exhaustion,something, mayhap, like those of a sated villain.

The urchin bended over his mother. He was fearful lest sheshould open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong,that he could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinatedover the woman's grim face.

Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself lookingstraight into that expression, which, it would seem, had the powerto change his blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fellbackward.

The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about herhead as if in combat, and again began to snore.

Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in thenext room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother wasawake. He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn faceriveted upon the intervening door.

He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came tohim. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchinstarted. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from thedoor-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.

The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-likesleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing asif she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window aflorid moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance thewaters of a river glimmered pallidly.

The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Herfeatures were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear. She grasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and theyhuddled in a corner. The eyes of both were drawn, by some force,to stare at the woman's face, for they thought she need only toawake and all fiends would come from below.

They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at thewindow, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at theprostrate, heaving body of the mother.