Dear Sam: You can’t have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised when I went away to college I would come back and try to make things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about Janie and little Bobs. I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have something to eat to celebrate. Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always, Your brother and friend, MIKKY. “Address, Michael Endicott, No —— West 23rd St.” A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read: MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar. SAM. Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly’s corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly’s corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly’s saloon. Only the “gang” knew the name, “Kelly’s Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and “de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly’s corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman’s club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly’s corner never got into the newspapers. Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael’s mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, “Don’t bring no one with you. If you do, I won’t be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.