r. Cassidy. "Didn't know they
ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?"

One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other
twinkled at least like paste.

"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the
feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if--wonder if! Wait, Jack,
till I go up and see."

Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out
from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.

"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he?
Oh, did he?"

Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed
hopelessly.

Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it
gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety,
pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched,
unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.

"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out.
What was it? Did he hurt you--what did he do?"

Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her
friend.

"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't
ever tell nobody--keep it under your hat. He--he never touched me,
and--he's--oh, Gawd--he's washin' the clothes--he's washin' the
clothes!"

"THE GUILTY PARTY"

A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a
window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with
great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of
blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed
daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening
paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be
followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.

In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong
bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from
the vespertine pipe.

Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which,
as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty
host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in
rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as
young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude
and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar,
to embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of the
House of Sin. Above the playground forever h