aby. You'll find another place for it?"

"Yes."

"And then steal it from the woman who has it now?"

"Yes; no trouble in the world. She's drunk every night," answered Pinky
Swett, rising to go.

"You'll see me to-morrow?" said Mrs. Bray.

"Oh yes."

"And you won't forget about the policies?"

"Not I. We shall make a grand hit, or I'm a fool. Day-day!" Pinky waved
her hand gayly, and then retired.

CHAPTER VI.

_A COLD_ wet drizzling rain was beginning to fall when Pinky Swett
emerged from the house. Twilight was gathering drearily. She drew her
thin shawl closely, and shivered as the east wind struck her with a
chill.

At hurried walk of five or ten minutes brought her to a part of the town
as little known to its citizens generally as if it were in the centre
of Africa--a part of the town where vice, crime, drunkenness and beggary
herd together in the closest and most shameless contact; where men and
women, living in all foulness, and more like wild beasts than human
beings, prey greedily upon each other, hurting, depraving and marring
God's image in all over whom they can get power or influenced--_a very
hell upon the earth!_--at part of the town where theft and robbery and
murder are plotted, and from which prisons and almshouses draw their
chief population.

That such a herding together, almost in the centre of a great Christian
city, of the utterly vicious and degraded, should be permitted, when
every day's police and criminal records give warning of its cost
and danger, is a marvel and a reproach. Almost every other house, in
portions of this locality, is a dram-shop, where the vilest liquors are
sold. Policy-offices, doing business in direct violation of law, are in
every street and block, their work of plunder and demoralization going
on with open doors and under the very eyes of the police. Every one of
them is known to these officers. But arrest is useless. A hidden and
malign influence, more potent than justice, has power to protect the
traffic and hold the guilty offenders harmless. Conviction is rarely, if
ever, reached.

The poor wretches, depraved and plundered through drink and
policy-gambling, are driven into crime. They rob and steal and debase
themselves for money with which to buy rum and policies, and sooner or
later the prison or death removes the greater number of them from their
vile companions. But drifting toward this fatal locality under the
attraction of affinity, or