good. It was late
before the party broke up; it was 3 A.M. when the meat-cutter burst into
the tenement, roaring drunk, clamoring for the lives of brothers-in-law in
general and that of his own in particular, and smashed the stove lids with
crash after crash that aroused the slumbering household with a jerk.

For once it was caught napping. The long peace had bred a fatal sense of
security. Kate was off scouting duty and Mrs. Riley had her hands full
with Pat, Bridget, and the baby all having measles at once--too full to
take warning from her husband's suspicious absence at bedtime. Roused in
the middle of the night to the defense of her brood, she fought gallantly,
but without hope. The battle was bloody and brief. Beaten and bruised, she
gathered up her young and fled into the blinding storm to the house of a
pitying neighbor, who took them in, measles and all, to snuggle up with
his own while he mounted guard on the doorstep against any pursuing enemy.
But the meat-cutter merely slammed the door upon his evicted family. He
spent the rest of the night smashing the reminders of his brother-in-law's
hated kin. Kate, reconnoitering at daybreak, brought back word that he was
raging around the house with three other drunken men. The opening of the
Bureau found her encamped on the doorstep with a demand that help come
quickly--the worst had happened. "Has little Mike broken his neck?" they
asked in breathless chorus. "Worse nor that," she panted; "do be comin',
Miss Kane!"

"Oh, what is it? Are any of the children dead?"

"Worse nor that; Mr. Riley has broke loose!" Kate always spoke of her
father in his tantrums as Mister, as if he were a doubtful acquaintance.
Her story of the night's doings was so lurid that the intimacy of many a
_post-bellum_ remorse felt unequal to the strain, and Miss Kane
commandeered a policeman on the way to the house. The meat-cutter received
her with elaborate inebriate courtesy, loftily ignoring the officer.

"Who is he?" he asked, aside.

She tried evasion. "A friend of mine I met." She was sorry immediately.

"Is he that? Then he is no friend of mine. Oh, Miss Kane," he grieved,
"why did you go for to get him? You know I'd have protected you!" This
with an indignant scowl at his fellow-marauders, who were furtively
edging toward the door. An inquest of the house showed the devastation of
war. The kitchen was a wreck; the bedroom furniture smashed; the Morris
chair in which the family of