lf
against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the three
balls of the pawnbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the shop was
howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and the louder she screamed the
more violent were the man's efforts to beat down the door between them.

As John Storm stood a moment looking on, some one on the street beside
him said, "It's a d---- shyme." It was a man with a feeble, ineffectual
face and the appearance of a waiter. Seeing he had been overheard, the
man stammered: "Beg parding, sir; but they may well say 'when the Devil
can't come hisself 'e sends 'is brother Drink.'" Having said this he
began to move along, but stopped suddenly on seeing what the clergyman
with the dog was doing.

John Storm was pushing his way through the crowd, and his black figure in
that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding.
"What's this?" he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the
clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from
the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in a moment to
mutterings and gnashings and a broken and irregular silence.

Then somebody said, "It's nothink, sir." And somebody else said, "'Es
on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother." Without listening to this
explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and
was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door.

"What's going on?" he demanded. "Will nobody speak?"

Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of a
house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman
carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his
hands, and with a wink he said: "A christenin'--that's what's going on.
'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?"

At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the
drunken man began to say that he could "knock spots out of any bloomin'
parson, en' now bloomin' errer."

But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. "What's yer
gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral,
down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear."

The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken
man's courage was rising to fever heat. "I'll give 'im one-two between
the eyes if 'e touches me again." Then he flung himself on the pawnshop
like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided