This candid remark was addressed by a fisherman in blue flannel shirtsleeves to a gentleman in afternoon dress. It was in the month of September, and the fleets were busy in and off the harbor of the fishing-town. The autumn trips were well under sail, and the docks and streets of Windover buzzed and reeled with crews just anchored or about to weigh. At the juncture of the principal business avenue of the town with its principal nautical street--from a date passing the memory of living citizens irreverently named Angel Alley--a fight was in brisk progress. This was so common an incident in that part of the town that the residents had paid little attention to it. But the stranger, being a stranger, had paused and asked for a policeman. The bystanders stared. “There ain’t none nigher’n the station,” replied a girl who was watching the fight with evident relish. She wore a pert sailor hat of soiled white straw, set on one side of her head, and carried her hands in the pockets of a crumpled tan-colored reefer. Her eyes were handsome and bold. The crowd jostled her freely, which did not seem to trouble her. “There’s a fellow just arrested,” she explained cheerfully, “for smashing his wife with a coal-hod; they’re busy with him down to the station. He fit all the way over. It took four cops to hold him. Most the folks are gone over there to see the other game. This fun here won’t be spoiled just yet awhile.” Something in the expression with which the gentleman regarded her attracted the girl’s attention. She took her hands out of her pockets, and scanned him with a dull surprise; then, with a motion which one could not call abashed, but which fell short of her previous ease of manner, she turned her back and walked a little away towards the edge of the crowd. The fight was at its hottest. Two men, an Italian laborer and an American fisherman, were somewhat seriously belaboring each other, to their own undisguised satisfaction and the acclamation of the bystanders. Both were evidently more or less drunk. An open grogshop gaped behind them. Similar places of entertainment, with others less easily described, lined both sides of Angel Alley, multiplying fruitfully, till the wharves joined their grimy hands and barred the way to this black fertility. It was a windy day; the breeze was rising, and the unseen sea could be heard moaning beyond. Just as the stranger, with the indiscretion of youth and inexperience, was about to step into the ring and try to stop the row, a child pushed through the crowd. It was a boy; a little fellow, barely four or five years old. He ducked under the elbows and between the legs of the spectators with an adroitness which proclaimed him the son of a sailor, and ran straight to the combatants, crying: “Father! Fa--ther! Marm says to please to stop! She says to ax you to _please_ to stop, and come home wiv you’ little boy!”