es and dogs awaited her.
This tumultuous island was only a place to visit, after all.

"Do you suppose this goes on every night?" she said to Haney, as they
turned off Broadway.

"I reckon it does," he said. "How is that, Lucius?" he asked. "Is this a
special performance, or does the old town do this every night?"

"In the season, yes, sir. It's the last week of the Opera, and it'll be
quieter now till November."

They returned to their hotel with a sense of having touched the ultimate
in civic splendor, human pride, and social complexity. New York had met
most of their ideals. They were glad it was on American soil and in the
nation's metropolis; but, after all, it remained alien and mysterious,
of a rank with Paris and London--the gateway city of the nation, where
the Old World meets and mingles with the New.

CHAPTER XXI

BERTHA MAKES A PROMISE

As for Marshall Haney, as he went about New York and Brooklyn in search
of his relations, he was astounded at the translation of the Irish
laborer into something else. "In my time, when I left Troy, all the work
in the streets was done by 'micks,' as they called 'em. Now they're
gone--whisked away as ye'd sweep away a swarm of red ants, and here's
these black Dagos in their places. Where's the Irishman gone--up or
down? That's what's eatin' me. Is he dead or translated to a higher
speer? 'Tis a mysterious dispensation, and troubles me much."

He found a good many Donahues in Brooklyn, and plenty of them
barkeepers; and after he'd pulled up half a dozen times at these
"joints" Bertha began to pout. She didn't like such places; and as they
were riding in a showy auto-car (the grandest Lucius could secure), they
were pretty middling noticeable. At last she said, more sharply than she
had ever spoken to him before: "Mart, I don't want any more of this. If
you want to visit all the saloons in Brooklyn, I don't. Here's where I
get out."

He was instantly remorseful. "I was thinkin' of that myself, Bertie.
Lucius and I will go on alone. We'll send you back to the hotel in the
'mobile whilst we take a hack."

Half doubting, half glad, she consented to this arrangement, and was
soon whirling back towards the ferry, her guilty feeling giving place to
a sense of relief, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her
shoulders--for a moment. She began to understand that half the pleasure
she had taken in her hours with Moss and Humiston lay in the freedom
from her husb