"Tell you what," she said, turning from me, and seeming to wake up; "tell you what I'd like to do to that old counsel. I'd like to----" And here she poured forth a string of suggestions so disgusting that I cannot even convey them by euphemism. Her mouth was a sewer. The air about us stunk with her talk. When she had finished, my mate again leaned across me, and asked in a hollow whisper, like the friction of sand-paper-- "'Ere--Luba--tell us. Why d'you go back on Billie, eh?" Luba made an expressive gesture with her fingers in his face, and that was the only answer he received; for she suddenly noticed me again, and, without another word, she dipped her hand to her bosom and pulled out a naked knife of the bowie pattern and twisted it under my nose. With the nervous instinct of the moment, I dodged back; but it followed me. "No monkey-tricks with me, dear! See? Else you'll know what. See?" I was turning to my friend, in an appeal for intervention, when, quite as suddenly as the knife was drawn, it disappeared, for Luba overbalanced because of the gin that was in her, and slipped from the form. Between us, we picked her up, replaced her, and tucked the knife into its sheath. Whereupon she at once got up, and said she was off. For some reason she went through an obscure ritual of solemnly pulling my ear and slapping my face. Then she slithered across the room, fell up the stair into the passage, and disappeared into the caverns of gloom beyond the door. When she had gone, some one said, "Daddy--Luba's gone!" Daddy leaped from the form, snarled something inarticulate, fell up the same stair, and went babbling and yelling after Luba. Some one came and shoved a fuzzy head through the door, asking lazily, "Whassup?" "Luba's gone." "Oh!" I wondered vaguely if it was a nightmare; if I had gone mad; or if other people had gone mad. I don't know now what it all meant. I only know that the girl was the Crown's principal witness in a now notorious murder case. My ear still burns. A CHARITABLE NIGHT EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH _POOR_ _From jail he sought her, and he found A darkened house, a darkened street, A shrilly sky that screamed of sleet, And from The Lane quick gusts of sound._ _He mocked at life that men call sweet. He went and wiped it out in beer-- "Well, dammit, why should I stick here, By a dark house in a dark street?"_ _For he and his but serve defeat; For kings they gather gems and gold, And life for them, when all is told, Is a dark house in a dark street._ A CHARITABLE NIGHT EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH