the custom to leave very little else to them. There was every facility
for the capture of coin, from trap-doors to plain ordinary knock-out
drops.

And yet Minetta Lane is built on the grave of Minetta Brook, where, in
olden times, lovers walked under the willows on the bank, and Minetta
Lane, in later times, was the home of many of the best families of the
town.

A negro named Bloodthirsty was perhaps the most luminous figure of
Minetta Lane's aggregation of desperadoes. Bloodthirsty supposedly is
alive now, but he has vanished from the lane. The police want him for
murder. Bloodthirsty is a large negro, and very hideous. He has a
rolling eye that shows white at the wrong time, and his neck, under the
jaw, is dreadfully scarred and pitted.

Bloodthirsty was particularly eloquent when drunk, and in the wildness
of a spree he would rave so graphically about gore that even the
habitated wool of old timers would stand straight.

Bloodthirsty meant most of it, too. That is why his orations were
impressive. His remarks were usually followed by the wide, lightning
sweep of his razor. None cared to exchange epithets with Bloodthirsty. A
man in a boiler iron suit would walk down to City Hall and look at the
clock before he would ask the time of day from the single-minded and
ingenuous Bloodthirsty.

After Bloodthirsty, in combative importance, came No-Toe Charley.
Singularly enough, Charley was called No-Toe Charley because he did not
have a toe on his feet. Charley was a small negro, and his manner of
amusement befitting a smaller man. Charley was more wise, more sly, more
round-about than the other man. The path of his crimes was like a
corkscrew in architecture, and his method led him to make many tunnels.
With all his cleverness, however, No-Toe was finally induced to pay a
visit to the gentlemen in the grim, grey building up the river--Sing
Sing.

Black-Cat was another famous bandit who made the land his home.
Black-Cat is dead. Jube Tyler has been sent to prison, and after
mentioning the recent disappearance of Old Man Spriggs it may be said
that the lane is now destitute of the men who once crowned it with a
glory of crime. It is hardly essential to mention Guinea Johnson.

Guinea is not a great figure. Guinea is just an ordinary little crook.
Sometimes Guinea pays a visit to his friends, the other little crooks
who make homes in the lane, but he himself does not live there, and with
him out of it there is now