hese and beat her
until she had thoroughly paid the penalty for all her little
dishonesties and treacheries. It was curious that all the little people
in the plot received tangible punishments, while the big people seemed
to go scot-free. Blizzard, for instance.

No sooner recovered from the operation on the back of his head than the
creature was up and doing. In straightening out his life and affairs he
displayed the energy of a steam-boiler under high pressure and a
colossal cheerfulness.

His first act was to marry Rose; his second to let it be known
throughout the East Side that he was no longer marching in the forefront
of crime. This ultimatum started a procession of wrongdoers to Marrow
Lane. They came singly, in threes and fours, humble and afraid; men of
substance, gun-men, the athletic, the diseased, fat crooks, thin crooks,
saloon-keepers and policemen, Italians and Slavs, short noses and long
(many--many of them), two clergymen, two bankers, sharp-eyed children,
married women who were childless, unmarried women who weren't--and all
these came trembling and with but the one thought: "Is he going to tell
what he knows about us?"

He was not. Some he bullied a little, for habit is strong; some he
treated with laughter and irony, some with wit, and some with kindness
and deep understanding. He might have been an able shepherd going to
work on a hopelessly numerous black and ramshackle flock of sheep. He
couldn't expect to make model citizens out of all his old heelers; he
couldn't expect to turn more than fifty per cent of his two clergymen
into the paths of righteousness. But with the young criminals he took
much pains, giving money where it would do good, and advice whether it
would do good or not. Among the first to come to him was Kid Shannon.

"Now look a-here," said the Kid, "I bin good and bad by turns till I
don't know which side is top side. But this minute I'm good--d'you get
me? If you want to jail me you kin do it, nobody easier; but don't do
it! You was always a bigger man than me, and when you led I
followed--for a real man had rather follow a strong bad man than a good
slob any day. You out of the lead, I got nothing to follow but me own
wishes, and they're all to the good these days."

"A woman?" said Blizzard sternly.

"She ain't a woman yet," said the Kid, "and she ain't a kid--she's about
half-past girl o'clock, and she thinks there's no better man in the
United States than always truly