“Eh, Jimmie, it’s cursed shame,” she said.  “Go, now, like a dear an’ buy me a can, an’ if yer mudder raises ’ell all night yehs can sleep here.”

Jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed.  He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar.  Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him.  He saw two hands thrust down and take them.  Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left.

In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure.  It was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs.

“Give me deh can.  See?” said the man, threateningly.

“Ah, come off!  I got dis can fer dat ol’ woman an’ it ’ud be dirt teh swipe it.  See?” cried Jimmie.

The father wrenched the pail from the urchin.  He grasped it in both hands and lifted it to his mouth.  He glued his lips to the under edge and tilted his head.  His hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his chin.  There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone.

The man caught his breath and laughed.  He hit his son on the head with the empty pail.  As it rolled clanging into the street, Jimmie began to scream and kicked repeatedly at his father’s shins.

“Look at deh dirt what yeh done me,” he yelled.  “Deh ol’ woman ‘ill be raisin’ hell.”

He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue.  He staggered toward the door.

“I’ll club hell outa yeh when I ketch yeh,” he shouted, and disappeared.

During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially:  “My home reg’lar livin’ hell!  Damndes’ place!  Reg’lar hell!  Why do I come an’ drin’ whisk’ here thish way?  ‘Cause home reg’lar livin’ hell!”

Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up through the building.  He passed with great caution the door of the gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.

He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of the room.  She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, Jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.

“Why deh blazes don’ chere try teh keep Jim from fightin’?  I’ll break her jaw,” she suddenly bellowed.

The man mumbled with drunken indifference.  “Ah, wha’ deh hell.  W’a’s odds?  Wha’ makes kick?”

“Because he tears ’is clothes, yeh damn fool,” cried the woman in supreme wrath.

The husband seemed to become aroused.  “Go teh hell,” he thundered fiercely in reply.  There was a crash against the door and something broke into clattering fragments.  Jimmie partially suppressed a howl and darted down the stairway.  Below he paused and listened.  He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging.  With all was the crash of splintering furniture.  The eyes of the urchin glared in fear that one of them would discover him.