hen we both sat still in the dark while our veins grew icy. Somebody
below was begging and pleading for mercy, while somebody else was
commanding quiet in a voice that meant bloodshed as an alternative. At
intervals there was a fierce struggle, mingled with destruction and
hair-lifting language.

Was the janitor murdering her husband? Or could it be that it was the
other way, and that tardy justice had overtaken the janitor--that, at
the hands of her husband or some outraged tenant, she was meeting a
well-merited doom? Remembering her presence and muscular proportions I
could not hope that this was possible.

The Little Woman whispered tremblingly that we ought to do something. I
whispered back that I was quite willing she should, if she wanted to,
but that for my own part I had quit interfering in Hibernian domestic
difficulties some years since. In the morning I would complain to the
landlord of our service. I would stand it no longer.

Meantime, it was not yet morning, and the racket below went on. The very
quantity of it was reassuring. There was too much of it for real murder.
The Precious Ones presently woke up and cried. None of us got to sleep
again until well-nigh morning, even after the commotion below had
degenerated into occasional moans, and final silence.

Before breakfast I summoned up all my remaining courage and went down
there. The janitor herself came to the door. She was uninjured, so far
as I could discover. I was pretty mad, and the fact that I was afraid
of her made me madder.

"What do you mean?" I demanded, "by making such a horrible racket down
here in the middle of the night?"

She regarded me with an amazed look, as if I had been dreaming.

"I want to know," I repeated, "what was all that noise down here last
night?"

She smiled grimly.

"Oh, an' is _that_ it? Yez want to know what was the _ni'se_, do yez?
Well, thin, it was none o' yer business, _that's_ what it was. Now go on
wid yez, an' tend to yer _own_ business, if yez have any. D'y' mind?"

With the information that I was going at once to the landlord, I turned
and hurried up the stairs to avoid violence. She promptly followed me.

"So yez'll be after telling the landlord, will yez? Well, thin, yez can
just tell the landlord, an' yez can just sind him to me. You'll sind Tim
Reilly to me. Maybe yez don't know that Tim Reilly once carried bricks
fer my old daddy, an' many's the time I've given him a bite an' a sup at
our bac