The narrow alley itself seemed fairly thronging with noisy, unhappy men and women. Hoarse laughs mingled with rough cursing, shot through with an occasional scream. Stifling odors lurked in cellar doorways and struck one full in the face unawares. Curses seemed to be the setting for all conversation whether angry or jolly. Babies tumbled in the gutter and older children fought over some scrap of garbage.

Appalled, Michael halted and almost turned back. Then, remembering that this was where he had come from,—where he belonged,—and that his duty, his obligation, was to find his friends, he went steadily forward.

There sat old Sal, a belligerent gleam in her small sodden eyes. Four men on a step opposite, with a candle stood between them, were playing cards. Sal muttered a word as Michael approached and the candle was suddenly extinguished. It looked as if one had carelessly knocked it down to the pavement, but the glare nickered into darkness and Michael could no longer see the men's faces. He had wondered if one of them was Sam. But when he rubbed his eyes and looked again in the darkness the four men were gone and the step was occupied by two children holding a sleeping baby between them and staring at him in open-mouthed admiration.

The flickering weird light of the distant street lamps, the noise and confusion, the odors and curses filled him anew with a desire to flee, but he would not let himself turn back. Never had Michael turned from anything that was his duty from fear or dislike of anything.

He tried to enter into conversation with old Sal again, but she would have none of him. She had taken “a wee drapth” and was alert and suspicious. In fact, the whole alley was on the alert for this elegant stranger who was none of theirs, and who of course could have come but to spy on some one. He wanted Sam, therefore Sam was hidden well and at that moment playing a crafty game in the back of a cellar on the top of an old beer barrel, by the light of a wavering candle; well guarded by sentinels all along the difficult way. Michael could have no more found him under those circumstances than he could have hoped to find a needle in a haystack the size of the whole city of New York.

He wandered for two hours back and forth through the alley seeing sights long since forgotten, hearing words unspeakable; following out this and that suggestion of the interested bystanders; always coming back without finding Sam. He had not yet comprehended the fact that he was not intended to find Sam. He had taken these people into his confidence just as he had always taken everyone into his confidence, and they were playing him false. If they had been the dwellers on Fifth Avenue he would not have expected them to be interested in him and his plans and desires; but these were his very own people, at least the “ownest” he had in the world, and among them he had once gone freely, confidently. He saw no reason why they should have changed toward him, though he felt the antagonism in the atmosphere as the night wore on, even as he had felt it in the Endicott house the day before.

Heartsick and baffled at last he took his way slowly, looking back many times, and leaving many messages for Sam. He felt as if he simply could not go back to even so uncomfortable a bed an he called his own in his new lodgings without having found some clew to his old comrades.

Standing at the corner of the alley opposite the flaunting lights of the saloon he looked back upon the swarming darkness of the alley and his heart filled with a great surging wave of pity, love, and sorrow. Almost at his feet in a dark shadow of a doorway a tiny white-faced boy crouched fast asleep on the stone threshold. It made him think of little Bobs, and his own barren childhood, and a mist came before his eyes as he looked up, up at the sky where the very stars seemed small and far away as if the sky had nothing to do with this part of the earth.

“Oh, God!” he said under his breath. “Oh, God! I must do something for them!”

And then as if the opportunity came with the prayer there reeled into view a little group of people, three or four men and a woman.

The woman was talking in a high frightened voice and protesting. The men caught hold of her roughly, laughing and flinging out coarse jests. Then another man came stealing from the darkness of the alley and joined the group, seizing the woman by the shoulders and speaking words to her too vile for repetition. In terrible fear the girl turned, for Michael could see, now that she was nearer, that she was but a young girl, and that she was pretty. Instantly he thought of Starr and his whole soul rose in mighty wrath that any man should dare treat any girl as he had seen these do. Then the girl screamed and struggled to get away, crying: “It ain't true, it ain't true! Lem'me go! I won't go with you—”

Instantly Michael was upon them, his powerful arms and supple body dashing the men right and left. And because of the suddenness of the attack coming from this most unexpected quarter,—for Michael had stood somewhat in the shadow—and because of the cowardliness of all bullies, for the moment he was able to prevail against all four, just long enough for the girl to slip like a wraith from their grasp and disappear into the shadows.

Then when the men, dazed from surprise, though not seriously hurt, discovered that their prey was gone and that a stranger from the higher walks of life had frustrated their plans they fell upon him in their wrath.

Michael brave always, and well trained in athletics, parried their blows for an instant, but the man, the one who had come from the shadows of the alley, whose face was evil, stole up behind and stabbed him in the shoulder.