'll ring for the police."

* * * * * * * * * * *

I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning.
No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was there. It was to
say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him,
Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he didn't. Men don't pull down
the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for
me he wouldn't have made a thief of me. If he'd cared, the last place
on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his
track, would have been just the first place he made for. If he'd
cared, he--

But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap--that's what he is, this Tom
Dorgan. Cheaply bad--a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my
wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to
sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter.
Oh--

The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring partner has
gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan--the real one, poor
fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan--he died. Yes, he died,
Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard. A hard lot
for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him. He
might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before
the mast this morning.

X.

There I was seated in a box all alone--Miss Nancy Olden, by courtesy of
the management, come to listen to the leading lady sing coon-songs,
that I might add her to my collection of take-offs.

She's a fat leading lady, very fair and nearly fifty, I guess. But
she's got a rollicking, husky voice in her fat throat that's sung the
dollars down deep into her pockets. They say she's planted them deeper
still--in the foundations of apartment houses--and that now she's the
richest roly-poly on the Rialto.

Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in the
box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller? He said he'd
drop in later, perhaps.

"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea myself.
They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic temperament,
that that's all you'll ever have. But there's a chance--one in a
hundred--for a body to get that temperament mixed with a business
instinct. It doesn't often happen. But when it does the result
is--dollars. It may be, Nance--I shrewdly suspect it is a fact that
you've got t