a silver dollar,
it was breathlessly whispered in the alley--in the contribution box,
merely served to strengthen this belief. The fact was, I suspect, that
the key-ring was the biggest end of the business Old Barney cultivated
so assiduously. There were keys enough on it, and they rattled most
persistently as he sent forth the strange whoop which no one ever was
able to make out, but which was assumed to mean "Keys! keys!" But he was
far too feeble and tremulous to wield a file with effect. In his younger
days he had wielded a bayonet in his country's defence. On the rare
occasions when he could be made to talk, he would tell, with a
smouldering gleam in his sunken eyes, how the Twenty-third Illinois
Volunteers had battled with the Rebs weary nights and days without
giving way a foot. The old man's bent back would straighten, and he
would step firmly and proudly, at the recollection of how he and his
comrades earned the name of the "heroes of Lexington" in that memorable
fight. But only for the moment. The dark looks that frightened the
children returned soon to his face. It was all for nothing, he said.
While he was fighting at the front he was robbed. His lieutenant, to
whom he gave his money to send home, stole it and ran away. When he
returned after three years there was nothing, nothing! At this point the
old man always became incoherent. He spoke of money the government owed
him and withheld. It was impossible to make out whether his grievance
was real or imagined.

When Colonel Grant came to Mulberry Street as a police commissioner,
Barney brightened up under a sudden idea. He might get justice now.
Once a week, through those two years, he washed himself, to the mute
astonishment of the alley, and brushed up carefully, to go across and
call on "the general's son" in order to lay his case before him. But he
never got farther than the Mulberry Street door. On the steps he was
regularly awestruck, and the old hero, who had never turned his back to
the enemy, faltered and retreated. In the middle of the street he
halted, faced front, and saluted the building with all the solemnity of
a grenadier on parade, then went slowly back to his attic and to his
unrighted grievance.

It had been the talk of the neighborhood for years that the alley would
have to go in the Elm Street widening which was to cut a swath through
the block, right over the site upon which it stood; and at last notice
was given about Christmas time