As in passing I stooped over the weeping girl, one of them,
thinking I was one of the men about the place, and misunderstanding
my purpose, sprang between us like a tigress and pushed me back.
"Not her!" she cried, and shook her fist at me; "not her! It is all
right with us. We are old and tough. But she is young, and don't
you dare!"
I went out and stood under the stars, and thanked God that I was
born. Only tramps! It had been dinned into my ears until I said
it myself, God forgive me! Aye, that was what we had made of them
with our infernal machinery of rum-shop, tenement, dive, and--this
place. With Christian charity instead, what might they not have
been?
CHAPTER XI
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS
If there be any to whom the travail through which we have just come
seems like a mighty tempest in a teapot, let him quit thinking so.
It was not a small matter. To be sure, the wrong could have been
undone in a day by the authorities, had they been so minded. That
it was not undone was largely, and illogically, because no one had
a word to say in its defence.
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