e out of the 29th Street door,
and kept on toward Lexington Avenue. We hadn't gone but a little way
from the church, when John, who was walking ahead, come up agin Tom
McGinniss. He was stooping over a woman huddled up on them big front
steps before you get to the corner.

"'What are you doin', Tom?' says John.

"'It's a drunk,' he says, 'an I'll run her in an' she'll sleep it off
and be all the better in the mornin'.'

"'Let me take a look at her, Tom,' says I; an' I got close to her breath
and there was no more liquor inside her than there is in me this minute.

"'You'll do nothin' of the kind, Tom McGinniss,' says I. 'This poor
thing is beat out with cold and hunger. Give her to me. I'll take her
home. Get hold of her, John, an' lift her up.'

"If ye'd 'a' seen her, Mr. O'Day, it would have torn ye all to pieces.
The life and spirit was all out of her. She was like a child half
asleep, that would go anywhere you took her. If I'd said, 'Come along,
I'm goin' to drown ye,' she'd 'a' come just the same. Not one word fell
out of her mouth. Just went along between us, John an' I helpin' her
over the curbs and gutters until she got to this kitchen, an' I sat her
down in that chair, close by the stove, and began to dry her out, for
her dress was all soaked in the mud and streamin' with water. I got some
hot coffee into her, an' found a pair of John's old shoes, an' put 'em
on her feet till I had dried her own, an' when she got so she could
speak--not drunk, mind ye, nor doped; just dazed like as if she had been
hunted and had given up all hope. She said like a sick child speakin':
'You've been very kind, and I'm very grateful. I'll go now.'

"'No, ye won't,' I says; 'ye'll stay where ye are. Ye don't leave this
place to-night. Ye'll go up-stairs and git into my bed.' She looked at
me kind o' scared-like; then she looked at John an' our big man Mike who
had come in while I was dryin' her out, but I stopped that right away.
'No, ye needn't worry,' I said, 'an' ye won't. Ye're just as safe here
as ye would be in your mother's arms. Ye ain't the first one my man John
an' I have taken care of, an' ye won't be the last. Take another sip o'
that hot coffee, an' come with me.'

"Well, we got her up-stairs, an' I helped her undress, an' when I
unhooked her skirt an' it fell to the floor, I saw what I was up aginst.
She had the finest pair of silk stockings on her feet ye ever seen
in your life, and her petticoat was frills up