far gone in drunkenness, there tasted the last
drop of wickedness, and thence was flung unconscious and penniless on
the streets. A trap-door directly into the river accommodated those who
were inconsiderate enough to succumb under rough treatment.

The second story was given over to drinking. Polly Dickson there reigned
supreme, an anomaly. She was as pretty and fresh and pure-looking as
a child; and at the same time was one of the most ruthless and
unscrupulous of the gang. She could at will exercise a fascination
the more terrible in that it appealed at once to her victim's nobler
instincts of reverence, his capacity for what might be called aesthetic
fascination, as well as his passions. When she finally held him, she
crushed him as calmly as she would a fly.

Four bars supplied the drinkables. Dozens of "pretty waiter girls"
served the customers. A force of professional fighters was maintained by
the establishment to preserve that degree of peace which should look to
the preservation of mirrors and glassware.

The third story contained a dance hall and a theater. The character of
both would better be left to the imagination.

Night after night during the season, this den ran at top-steam.

By midnight, when the orgy was at its height, the windows brilliantly
illuminated, the various bursts of music, laughing, cursing, singing,
shouting, fighting, breaking in turn or all together from its open
windows, it was, as Jackson Hines once expressed it to me, like hell let
out for noon.

The respectable elements of the towns were powerless. They could
not control the elections. Their police would only have risked total
annihilation by attempting a raid. At the first sign of trouble they
walked straightly in the paths of their own affairs, awaiting the time
soon to come when, his stake "blown-in," the last bitter dregs of his
pleasure gulped down, the shanty boy would again start for the woods.

Chapter XXVII

Now in August, however, the first turmoil had died. The "jam" had
boiled into town, "taken it apart," and left the inhabitants to piece
it together again as they could; the "rear" had not yet arrived. As a
consequence, Thorpe found the city comparatively quiet.

Here and there swaggered a strapping riverman, his small felt hat cocked
aggressively over one eye, its brim curled up behind; a cigar stump
protruding at an angle from beneath his sweeping moustache; his hands
thrust into the pockets of his tr