“When you say ‘listen,’” asked Felix, whose attention to the conversation had never wavered, “do you refer to the confessional?”

“I do not.  That’s the least part of it.  So are the mass and the candles and choir-boys and the rest of the outfit, all very well in their way, for Sundays and fast-days, but just so much stage scenery to me, though its heaven to the poor devils who get color and music and restful quiet in contrast to their barren homes.  But praying before the altar is only one-quarter of what these priests are doing every hour of the day and night.  It’s part of my business to follow them around, and I know.  Hand me a light, Tim, my pipe’s out.”

Felix, being nearest the box, struck a match and held it close to Silas’s bowl, a cloud of smoke rising between them.  When it had cleared, O’Day remarked quietly:  “Don’t stop, Mr. Murford; go on, I am listening.  You have, as you said, only told us one-quarter of what these priests are doing.  Where do the other three-quarters come in?”

Silas rapped the bowl against the arm of his chair to clear it the better, and, twisting his great bulk toward O’Day, said slowly:  “If I tell you, will you listen and keep on listening until I get through?”

Felix bowed his head in acquiescence.  The others, knowing what a story from Silas meant, craned their necks in his direction.

“Well!  One night last winter—­over on Avenue A, snow on the ground, mind you, and cold as Greenland—­ a row broke out on the third floor of a tenement house.  In the snow on the sidewalk shivered a half-naked girl.  She was sobbing.  Her father had come in from his night shift at the gas house, crazy drunk, a piece of lead pipe in his hand.

“Two or three people had stopped, gazed at the girl, and passed her by.  Tenement-house rows are too common in some districts to be bothered over.  A policeman crossed the street, peered up the stairway, listened to the screams inside, looked the sobbing girl over, and kept on his way, swinging his club.  A priest came along—­one I know, a well-set-up man, who can take care of himself, no matter where.  He touched the girl’s arm and drew her inside the doorway, his head bent to hear her story.  Then he went up—­in jumps—­two steps at a time—­stumbling in the dark, picking himself up again, catching at the rail to help him mount the quicker, the screams overhead increasing at every step.  When he reached the door, it was bolted on the inside.  He let drive with his shoulder and in it went.  The girl’s mother was crouching in the far corner of the room, behind a heavy sofa.  The drunken husband stood over her, trying to get at her skull with the piece of lead pipe.

“At the bursting in of the door the brute wheeled and, with an oath, made straight for the priest, the weapon in his fist.

“The priest stepped clear of the door-jamb, moved under the single gas-jet, drew out his crucifix, and held it up.