passed to and fro. "Ol' Johnson's raisin' hell agin."

Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants
of the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then he
crawled 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 cracked
and soiled plastering, and the overturned and broken furniture.

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

The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread of
awakening his parents. His mother's great chest was heaving
painfully. Jimmie paused and looked down at her. Her face was
inflamed and swollen from drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eye-
lids that had brown blue. Her tangled hair tossed in waves over
her forehead. Her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictive
hatred 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 she
should open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong,
that he could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated
over the woman's grim face.