nd, in amazement.

"'Cause he can't go to church!"

It appeared that the gang had shut him out, with a sense of what was due
to the occasion, because of his rags. Restored to grace, and choking
down reminiscent sobs, the Kid sat through the Easter service,
surrounded by the twenty-seven "proper" members of the gang.
Civilization had achieved a victory, and no doubt my friend remembered
it in her prayers with thanksgiving. The manner was of less account.
Battle Row has its own ways, even in its acceptance of means of grace.

[Illustration: "The gang fell in with joyous shouts."]

I walked home from the office in the early gloaming. The street wore its
normal aspect of mingled dulness and the kind of expectancy that is
always waiting to turn any excitement, from a fallen horse to a fire, to
instant account. The early June heat had driven the multitudes from the
tenements into the street for a breath of air. The boys of the block
were holding a meeting at the hydrant. In some way they had turned the
water on, and were splashing in it with bare feet, revelling in the
sense that they were doing something that "went against" their enemy,
the policeman. Upon the quiet of the evening broke a bugle note and the
tramp of many feet keeping time. A military band came around the corner,
stepping briskly to the tune of "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Their
white duck trousers glimmered in the twilight, as the hundred legs
moved as one. Stoops and hydrant were deserted with a rush. The gang
fell in with joyous shouts. The young fellow linked arms with his
sweetheart and fell in too. The tired mother hurried with the baby
carriage to catch up. The butcher came, hot and wiping his hands on his
apron, to the door to see them pass.

"Yes," said my companion, guessing my thoughts,--we had been speaking of
the boys,--"but look at the other side. There is the military spirit. Do
you not fear danger from it in this country?"

No, my anxious friend, I do not. Let them march; and if with a gun,
better still. Often enough it is the choice of the gun on the shoulder,
or, by and by, the stripes on the back in the lockstep gang.

CHAPTER X

JIM

I used to think that it would have been better for Jim if he had never
been born. What the good bishop said of some children--that they were
not so much born into the world as they were damned into it--seemed true
of Jim, if ever it was true of any one. He had had a father, once, who
was