“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,
“Goin' to lock her up. She's drunk an' bin a-fightin'.”
“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.”
“I'll wring your neck off,” growled Sal, in a fierce undertone, making a dash toward the girl, and swearing frightfully. But the child shrank to the side of the policeman.
“If you lay a finger on Kit to-night,” said the queen, “I'll have her taken away, and you locked up into the the bargain.”
“Come.” The queen moved toward the door. Pinky followed, the policeman offering no resistance. A few minutes later, and the miserable crowd of depraved human beings had been absorbed again into cellar and garret, hovel and rookery, to take up the thread of their evil and sensual lives, and to plot wickedness, and to prey upon and deprave each other--to dwell as to their inner and real lives among infernals, to be in hell as to their spirits, while their bodies yet remained upon the earth.