aricatured by the
tenement. One who had been a cut-throat, bruiser, and prizefighter all his
brief life lay dying from consumption in his Fourth Ward tenement not long
ago. He had made what he proudly called a stand-up fight against the
disease until now the end had come and he had at last to give up.

"Maggie," he said, turning to his wife with eyes growing dim, "Mag! I had
an iron heart, but now it is broke. Watch me die!" And Mag told it proudly
at the wake as proof that Pat died game.

And the girl that has come thus far with him? Fewer do than one might
think. Many more switch off their lovers to some honest work this side of
the jail, making decent husbands of them as they are loyal wives, thus
proving themselves truly their better halves. But of her who goes his way
with him--it is not generally a long way for either--what of her end? Let
me tell the story of one that is the story of all. I came across it in the
course of my work as a newspaper man a year ago and I repeat it here as I
heard it then from those who knew, with only the names changed. The girl
is dead, but he is alive and leading an honest life at last, so I am told.
The story is that of "Kid" McDuff's girl.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V.

THE STORY OF KID McDUFF'S GIRL

The back room of the saloon on the northwest corner of Pell Street and the
Bowery is never cheery on the brightest day. The entrance to the dives of
Chinatown yawns just outside, and in the bar-room gather the vilest of the
wrecks of the Bend and the Sixth Ward slums. But on the morning of which I
speak a shadow lay over it even darker than usual. The shadow of death was
there. In the corner, propped on one chair, with her feet on another, sat
a dead woman. Her glassy eyes looked straight ahead with a stony,
unmeaning stare until the policeman who dozed at a table at the other end
of the room, suddenly waking up and meeting it, got up with a shudder and
covered the face with a handkerchief.

What did they see, those dead eyes? Through its darkened windows what a
review was the liberated spirit making of that sin-worn, wasted life,
begun in innocence and wasted--there? Whatever their stare meant, the
policeman knew little of it and cared less.

"Oh! it is just a stiff," he said, and yawned wearily. There was still
half an hour of his watch.

The clinking of glasses and the shuffle of cowhide boots on the sanded
floor outside grew louder and was muffled again as the door