Lizzie went out convalescent, but still weak and uncertain, and took refuge with one of the bakery girls who had half of a dark bedroom in a tenement house near the Big Flat. She looked for work. She answered advertisements, and at last began upon the simplest form of necktie, and in her slow, bungling fashion began to earn again. But she had no strength. She sat at the window and looked over to the Big Flat and watched the swarm that came and went; five hundred people in it, they told her, and half of them drunk at once. It was certain that there were always men lying drunk in the hallways in the midst of ashes and filth that accumulated there almost unchecked. The saloon below was always full; the stale beer dives all along the street full also, above all, at night, when the flaunting street-walkers came out, and fiddles squeaked, and cheap pianos rattled, and songs and shouts were over-topped at moments by the shrieks of beaten women or the oaths and cries of a sudden fight. Slowly it was coming to the girl that this was all the life New York had for her; that if she failed to meet the demand employer after employer had made upon her, she would die in this hole, where neither joy nor hope had any place. Her clothes were in rags. She went hungry and cold, and had grown too stupefied with trouble to plan anything better. At last it was plain to her that death must be best. She said to herself that the river could never tell, and that there would be rest and no more cold or hunger, and it was to the river that she went at night as the Widow Maloney rose before her and said,-- "You'll come home wid me, me dear, an' no wurruds about it." Lizzie looked at her stupidly. "You'd better not stop me," she said. "I'm no good. I can't earn my living anywhere any more. I don't know how. I'd better be out of the way." "Shure you'll be enough out o' the way whin you're in the top o' the Big Flat," said Mrs. Maloney. "An' once there we'll see." Lizzie followed her without a word, but when the stairs were climbed and she sunk panting and ghastly on one of the three chairs, it was quite plain to the widow that more work had begun. That it will very soon end is also quite plain to whoever dares the terrors of the Big Flat, and climbs to the wretched room, which in spite of dirt and foulness within and without is a truer sanctuary than many a better place. The army of incompetents will very shortly be the less by one, but more recruits are in training and New York guarantees an unending supply.