"Look here!" he returned, his tones taking a nasal whisper, and his breath sweeping so close to her nostrils that she caught in it a stale taint, as of liquor drank some time ago. "I wouldn't harm a hair o' your head; you can jus' bet on that. I've took a likin' to you, an' I'll treat ye good. If you wus a lady livin' up t' Fifth Avenyer, ye wouldn't git more respectfuller behaved to nur I'll do." "If you don't let me go," said Claire, gasping a little as she got out the words, "I'll complain to the first policeman we meet." He dropped her arm at once, stopping short. "D' ye mean it?" he asked, with great show of reproach. "Say! d' ye mean it?" But Claire hurried on. She had a wild momentary hope that she had hit at random upon a blessed source of deliverance. Here, however, she had quite miscalculated. Slocumb's outburst had merely formed a bit of the cheap sentimentality which one of his race and stamp would select as the lame makeshift in a forlorn cause. It chanced that when Claire reached the desired corner a car was opportunely passing. She signaled to it; the driver saw her; it stopped, and she entered it. Meanwhile Slocumb had kept at her side, though with the distance between them materially widened. She paid no heed to the question of whether or not he entered with her. The car was entirely empty as she took her seat. A little later she slipped a five-cent piece into the small glass repository for passengers' fares--that touching proof of the confidence reposed in drivers by those who employ them. Shortly afterward she saw Slocumb standing on the outer platform. Her heart and courage almost failed her, then. He presently walked inside the car, and paid his fare, as she had done. She expected him to sit down and resume his persecutions, but he did neither. He went out again and stood on the platform. The little car jingled along Eighth Street. It passed the grim, bastard architecture of the Mercantile Library, once, long ago, an opera house, in which Steffenone sang to assemblages where a gentleman in evening-dress or a lady without her bonnet was a rare enough incident, and nothing prophesied the horse-shoe of resplendent boxes before which Patti and Nilsson have since revealed their vocal charms. Soon afterward it came to Third Avenue, easily betrayed by the flare of gaslight in beer-saloon or liquor-shop, and a thoroughfare in which night revelry seems to have claimed especial stronghold. Near at hand, that hideous monument of philanthropy, the Cooper Union, frowns its unavailing displeasure upon the malt of Schneider and the alcohol of Moriarty, both of which project their noxious forces southward through the Bowery to the City Hall, and northward across many reputable side streets on to the shabby vulgarity of Harlem.