nd for a moment Hamilton thought the whole trouble
was over; but suddenly a man sprang to the front of the rioters, and
gesticulating wildly, answered the boy in what seemed to be a
threatening tone. The young Italian lad heard him through patiently,
then almost without raising his voice, uttered one crisp sentence. The
man turned white to the lips and slunk away.

"Ask him," said Hamilton to a policeman, "what he said?"

"I only asked him," the Italian said, "if he wanted me to find out his
name--so that you would know it if you wanted to arrest him of course,"
he added, as an afterthought.

The policeman looked at him and pulled the boy's ear, in fun.

"Av I knew as much about some things as you do," he said, "they'd make
me chief. Maybe, though," he added, "I wouldn't hold it long. But what
about this, Caesar, is it all over?"

The Italian nodded.

"See," he said, "they all go!"

It was as the boy said; Hamilton could see that little by little the
crowd was dispersing and that the members of the boyish gang were going
all through the groups, evidently explaining that the trouble was all
over.

"Ye see what we're up against," the policeman said to Hamilton. "Here's
a slip of a lad that c'n just make a crowd do what he says because his
father is a leader in the Mafia. There's never any one gives credit
enough to the force for keepin peace, between all these foreigners and
the Chinks; this ain't an American city, it's a racial nightmare."

"Do the Chinese give much trouble, then?"

"Not such a great deal usually, but they do once in a while. There's
bloody murder in Chinatown going on now, or going to begin mighty soon.
Three were killed yesterday and the word was given out at Headquarters
this morning that the Tongs were out."

[Illustration: THE FIGHTING MEN OF THE TONGS. The younger combatants of
the Five Brothers outside the impregnably guarded headquarters in
Chinatown, New York.]

"Have we Tongs in New York?" asked Hamilton. "I've heard all about the
troubles in the West. Before the fire in San Francisco, I know, there
were fifteen organized Tongs of Highbinders, each with its paid band of
'Hatchet Men' for no other purpose than to rule Chinatown. The man who
got up the report for the government told me that 'Frisco Chinatown was
far more under Tong rule and had far more crimes in proportion than any
city in China."

"There are six strong Tongs in New York that I know about," the
policeman answere