Calvary Alley | Page 4

She was a plump, perspiring person who
might have boasted good looks had it not been for two eye-teeth that
completely dominated her facial landscape.
"You surely ain't fixin' to report her?" she asked ingratiatingly of
Mason. "A little 'leven-year-ole orphin that never done no harm to
nobody?"
"It's no use arguing," interrupted Mason firmly. "I'm going to file out a
warrant against them three children if it's the last act of my mortal life.
There ain't a boy in the alley that gives me any more trouble than that
there little girl, a-throwin' mud over the fence and climbing round the
coping and sneaking into the cathedral to look under the pews for
nickels, if I so much as turn my back!"
"He wants the nickels hisself!" cried Nance shrilly, pushing her nose
flat and pursing her lips in such a clever imitation of the irate janitor
that the alley shrieked with joy.

"You limb o' Satan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, making a futile pass at her.
"It's a God's mericle you ain't been took up before this! And it's me as
'll have the brunt to bear, a-stoppin' my work to go to court, a-lying to
yer good character, an' a-payin' the fine. It's a pity able-bodied men like
policemens an' janitors can't be tendin' their own business 'stid of
comin' interferin' with the family of a hard-workin' woman like me. If
there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my direction!"
And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared
into the dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first
against her charge, then against the tyranny of the law.

CHAPTER II
THE SNAWDORS AT HOME
If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was
Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went
rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this
unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam
had been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending
them out again into the main current.
For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the
great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it
echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear
the murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the
least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious,
Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the
cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues
that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance over
its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very shadow
of its cross.
At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering
warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some

forgotten day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long
since hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former
grandeur were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and
the imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway.
In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt
the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The
complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling.
Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in
life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into
eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of
an initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny.
At the time she met him she had already led two reluctant captives to
the hymeneal altar, and was wont to boast, when twitted about the fact,
that "the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer
them eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial
young Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out
of gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not
lived to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an
embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in
which "only the engineer is killed."
The bereft widow lost no time in seeking consolation. Naturally the
first person to present himself on terms of sympathetic intimacy was
the undertaker who officiated at poor Bud's funeral. At the end of six
months she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige
which his profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away,
becoming, as it were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted
of a