A police patrol wagon stood at the side door.  Three able cops were half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps.  The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict.  Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness.

“Began fighting each other in the back room,” explained Kenealy to Con.  “And singing!  That was worse.  Smashed everything pretty much up.  But they’re good men.  They’ll pay for everything.  Trying to invent some new kind of cocktail, they was.  I’ll see they come out all right in the morning.”

Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield.  As he went through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs.

“Good evening again, Mr. Lantry,” said she.  “And is there no news from the weather yet?”

“Still threatens r-rain,” said Con, slipping past with red in his smooth, pale cheek.

Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle.  Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere.  The room was full of alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles.

On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure.  In the bottom of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid—­a bright golden liquid that seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths.

Con smelled it.  He tasted it.  He drank it.

As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the stairs.

“No news yet, Mr. Lantry?” she asked with her teasing laugh.

Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there.

“The news is,” he said, “that we’re to be married.”

“Put me down, sir!” she cried indignantly, “or I will—­ Oh, Con, where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?”

A HARLEM TRAGEDY

Harlem.

Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy’s flat one flight below.

“Ain’t it a beaut?” said Mrs. Cassidy.

She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see.  One eye was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it.  Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks on each side of her neck.

“My husband wouldn’t ever think of doing that to me,” said Mrs. Fink, concealing her envy.

“I wouldn’t have a man,” declared Mrs. Cassidy, “that didn’t beat me up at least once a week.  Shows he thinks something of you.  Say! but that last dose Jack gave me wasn’t no homeopathic one.  I can see stars yet.  But he’ll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the week to make up for it.  This eye is good for theater tickets and a silk shirt waist at the very least.”

“I should hope,” said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, “that Mr. Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me.”