child and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning and
a subdued bass muttering.

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

Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the
gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity
beneath her cloak. When she was arrested she had cursed the lady
into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from
rheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman
whose 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 dear
an' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs
can 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 high
as 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.