Poor Pinky, nearly stripped of her clothing, and with a great bruise swelling under one of her eyes, bewildered and frightened at the aspect of things around her, could make no acceptable defence.

“She ran over and pitched into Sal, so she did!  I saw her!  She made the fight, she did!” testified one of the crowd; and acting on this testimony and his own judgment of the case, the policeman said roughly, as he laid his hand on Pinky.

“Pick up your duds and come along.”

Pinky lifted her torn garments from the dirty floor and gathered them about her person as best she could, the crowd jeering all the time.  A pin here and there, furnished by some of the women, enabled her to get them into a sort of shape and adjustment.  Then she tried to explain the affair to the policeman, but he would not listen.

“Come!” he said, sternly.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, not moving from where she stood.

“Lock you up,” replied the policeman.  “So come along.”

“What’s the matter here?” demanded a tall, strongly-built woman, pressing forward.  She spoke with a foreign accent, and in a tone of command.  The motley crowd, above whom she towered, gave way for her as she approached.  Everything about the woman showed her to be superior in mind and moral force to the unsightly wretches about her.  She had the fair skin, blue eyes and light hair of her nation.  Her features were strong, but not masculine.  You saw in them no trace of coarse sensuality or vicious indulgence.

“Here’s Norah! here’s the queen!” shouted a voice from the crowd.

“What’s the matter here?” asked the woman as she gained an entrance to the hovel.

“Going to lock up Pinky Swett,” said a ragged little girl who had forced her way in.

“What for?” demanded the woman, speaking with the air of one in authority.

“’Cause she wouldn’t let old Sal beat Kit half to death,” answered the child.

“Ho!  Sal’s a devil and Pinky’s a fool to meddle with her.”  Then turning to the policeman, who still had his hand on the girl, she said,

“What’re you goin’ to do, John?”

“Goin’ to lock her up.  She’s drunk an’ bin a-fightin’.”

“You’re not goin’ to do any such thing.”

“I’m not drunk, and it’s a lie if anybody says so,” broke in Pinky.  “I tried to keep this devil from beating the life out of poor little Kit, and she pitched into me and tore my clothes off.  That’s what’s the matter.”

The policeman quietly removed his hand from Pinky’s shoulder, and glanced toward the woman named Sal, and stood as if waiting orders.

“Better lock her up,” said the “queen,” as she had been called.  Sal snarled like a fretted wild beast.

“It’s awful, the way she beats poor Kit,” chimed in the little girl who had before spoken against her.  “If I was Kit, I’d run away, so I would.”