burning nightly in
many studies and libraries.

Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green
silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hard
and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly,
she cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in his
own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went
frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the
waiter--made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the
strength of her arm permitted.

And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was it
self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the
natural branch?

Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying
through a grove of saplings at dusk.

And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient
and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight
and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved
and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest
barbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it
survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of
culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the
chase.

They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and
maidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood.
Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may
his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege.

Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the
familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the
rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and good
mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but
quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights
burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges.

* * * * * * *

It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call
them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed
the rest of this story.

I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I
suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking
patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some
such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there
was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgmen