went staggering back with the baby in
her arms, and seated herself on the ground beside the cup of bread and
water, which was mixed to the consistence of cream. As she did so the
light of her poor candle fell on the baby's face. It was pinched and
hungry and ashen pale, the thin lips wrought by want and suffering into
such sad expressions of pain that none but the most stupid and hardened
could look at them and keep back a gush of tears.

But Mother Hewitt saw nothing of this--felt nothing of this. Pity and
tenderness had long since died out of her heart. As she laid the baby
back on one arm she took a spoonful of the mixture prepared for its
supper, and pushed it roughly into its mouth. The baby swallowed it with
a kind of starving eagerness, but with no sign of satisfaction on
its sorrowful little face. But Mother Hewitt was too impatient to get
through with her work of feeding the child, and thrust in spoonful after
spoonful until it choked, when she shook it angrily, calling it vile
names.

The baby cried feebly at this, when she shook it again and slapped it
with her heavy hand. Then it grew still. She put the spoon again to its
lips, but it shut them tightly and turned its head away.

"Very well," said Mother Hewitt. "If you won't, you won't;" and she
tossed the helpless thing as she would have tossed a senseless bundle
over upon the heap of straw that served as a bed, adding, as she did so,
"I never coaxed my own brats."

The baby did not cry. Mother Hewitt then blew out the candle, and
groping her way to the door of the cellar that opened on the street,
went out, shutting down the heavy door behind her, and leaving the child
alone in that dark and noisome den--alone in its foul and wet garments,
but, thanks to kindly drugs, only partially conscious of its misery.

Mother Hewitt's first visit was to the nearest dram-shop. Here she spent
for liquor five cents of the money she had received. From the dram-shop
she went to Sam McFaddon's policy-office. This was not hidden away,
like most of the offices, in an upper room or a back building or in some
remote cellar, concealed from public observation, but stood with open
door on the very street, its customers going in and out as freely and
unquestioned as the customers of its next-door neighbor, the dram-shop.
Policemen passed Sam's door a hundred times in every twenty-four hours,
saw his customers going in and out, knew their errand, talked with Sam
about his bus