epraved and drunken woman and a child ten years
old, who might or might not be her daughter, lived there. The child was
sent out every day to beg or steal, and if she failed to bring home a
certain sum of money, was cruelly beaten by the woman. Almost every
day the poor child was cut with lashes, often on the bare flesh; almost
every day her shrieks rang out from the miserable hovel. But there was
no one to interfere, no one to save her from the smarting blows, no one
to care what she suffered.

Pinky Swett could stand it no longer. She had often noticed the ragged
child, with her pale, starved face and large, wistful eyes, passing
in and out of this miserable woman's den, sometimes going to the
liquor-shops and sometimes to the nearest policy-office to spend for
her mother, if such the woman really was, the money she had gained by
begging.

With a sudden impulse, as a deep wail and a more piteous cry for mercy
smote upon her ears, Pinky sprang across the street and into the hovel.
The sight that met her eyes left no hesitation in her mind. Holding up
with one strong arm the naked body of the poor child--she had drawn the
clothes over her head--the infuriated woman was raining down blows from
a short piece of rattan upon the quivering flesh, already covered with
welts and bruises.

"Devil!" cried Pinky as she rushed upon this fiend in human shape and
snatched the little girl from her arm. "Do you want to kill the child?"

She might almost as well have assaulted a tigress.

The woman was larger, stronger, more desperate and more thoroughly given
over to evil passions than she. To thwart her in anything was to rouse
her into a fury. A moment she stood in surprise and bewilderment; in
the next, and ere Pinky had time to put herself on guard, she had sprung
upon her with a passionate cry that sounded more like that of a wild
beast than anything human. Clutching her by the throat with one hand,
and with the other tearing the child from her grasp, she threw the
frightened little thing across the room.

"Devil, ha!" screamed the woman; "devil!" and she tightened her grasp
on Pinky's throat, at the same time striking her in the face with her
clenched fist.

Like a war-horse that snuffs the battle afar off and rushes to the
conflict, so rushed the inhabitants of that foul neighborhood to the
spot from whence had come to their ears the familiar and not unwelcome
sound of strife. Even before Pinky had time to shake off her