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




Chapter IV


The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white,
insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that
the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian.

She and Jimmie lived.

The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an
early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red
years without laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic.
He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than
he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a
respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it
had smashed.

He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in
at a mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous."
While they got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he
calculated they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners were
impatient over the pictured depths of their degradation. They were