Mother Hewitt’s first visit was to the nearest dram-shop.  Here she spent for liquor five cents of the money she had received.  From the dram-shop she went to Sam McFaddon’s policy-office.  This was not hidden away, like most of the offices, in an upper room or a back building or in some remote cellar, concealed from public observation, but stood with open door on the very street, its customers going in and out as freely and unquestioned as the customers of its next-door neighbor, the dram-shop.  Policemen passed Sam’s door a hundred times in every twenty-four hours, saw his customers going in and out, knew their errand, talked with Sam about his business, some of them trying their luck occasionally after there had been an exciting “hit,” but none reporting him or in any way interfering with his unlicensed plunder of the miserable and besotted wretches that crowded his neighborhood.

From the whisky-shop to the policy-shop went Mother Hewitt.  Here she put down five cents more; she never bet higher than this on a “row.”  From the policy-shop she went back to the whisky-shop, and took another drink.  By this time she was beginning to grow noisy.  It so happened that the woman who had left the baby with her a little while before came in just then, and being herself much the worse for drink, picked a quarrel with Mother Hewitt, accusing her of getting drunk on the money she received for keeping the baby, and starving it to death.  A fight was the consequence, in which they were permitted to tear and scratch and bruise each other in a shocking way, to the great enjoyment of the little crowd of debased and brutal men and women who filled the dram-shop.  But fearing a visit from the police, the owner of the den, a strong, coarse Irishman, interfered, and dragging the women apart, pushed Mother Hewitt out, giving her so violent an impetus that she fell forward into the middle of the narrow street, where she lay unable to rise, not from any hurt, but from sheer intoxication.

“What’s up now?” cried one and another as this little ripple of disturbance broke upon that vile and troubled sea of humanity.

“Only Mother Hewitt drunk again!” lightly spoke a young girl not out of her teens, but with a countenance that seemed marred by centuries of debasing evil.  Her laugh would have made an angel shiver.

A policeman came along, and stood for a little while looking at the prostrate woman.

“It’s Mother Hewitt,” said one of the bystanders.

“Here, Dick,” and the policeman spoke to a man near him.  “Take hold of her feet.”

The man did as told, and the policeman lifting the woman’s head and shoulders, they carried her a short distance, to where a gate opened into a large yard used for putting in carts and wagons at night, and deposited her on the ground just inside.

“She can sleep it off there,” said the policeman as he dropped his unseemly load.  “She’ll have a-plenty to keep her company before morning.”