in't she a reg'lar one? She don't care for the law, not
she! She's keepin' back a child from its hown mother!" And with that she
made a fierce attack on the shawl, and succeeded in dragging the infant
from Liz's reluctant arms. Wakened thus roughly from its slumbers, the
poor mite set up a feeble wailing; its mother, enraged at the sound,
shook it violently till it gasped for breath.

"Drat the little beast!" she cried. "Why don't it choke an' 'ave done
with it!"

And, without heeding the terrified remonstrances of Liz, she flung the
child roughly, as though it were a ball, through the open door of her
lodgings, where it fell on a heap of dirty clothes, and lay motionless;
its wailing had ceased.

"Oh, baby, baby!" exclaimed Liz, in accents of poignant distress. "Oh,
you have killed it, I am sure! Oh, you are cruel, cruel! Oh, baby,
baby!"

And she broke into a tempestuous passion of sobs and tears. The
bystanders looked on in unmoved silence. Mother Mawks gathered her torn
garments round her with a gesture of defiance, and sniffed the air as
though she said, "Any one who wants to meddle with me will get the worst
of it." There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the
gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came--a
massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair
and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then
at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood
by. "Wot's the row?" he demanded, quickly. "Wot's up? 'Ave it out fair!
Joe Mawks 'll stand by and see fair game. Fire away, my hearties! fire,
fire away!" And, with a chuckling idiot laugh, he dived into the
pocket of his torn corduroy trousers and produced a pipe. Filling this
leisurely from a greasy pouch, with such unsteady fingers that the
tobacco dropped all over him, he lighted it, repeating, with increased
thickness of utterance, "Wot's the row! 'Ave it out fair!"

"It's about your babby, Joe!" cried the girl before mentioned, jumping
up from her seat on the ground with such force that her hair came
tumbling all about her in a dark, dank mist, through which her thin,
eager face spitefully peered. "Liz has gone crazy! She wants your babby
to cuddle!" And she screamed with sudden laughter. "Eh, eh, fancy! Wants
a babby to cuddle!"

The stupefied Joe blinked drowsily and sucked the stem of his pipe with
apparent relish. Then, as if he had been engage