“Well, I should say so!” coincided Tricker, with the weary yet lofty manner of one who is a judge. In one corner were two women and a trio of men. The men were thieves of the cheap grade known as lush-workers. These beasts of prey lie about the East Side grog shops, and when some sailor ashore leaves a place, showing considerable slant, they tail him and take all he has. They will plunder their victim in sight of a whole street. No one will tell. The first lesson of Gangland is never to inform nor give evidence. One who does is called snitch; and the wages of the snitch is death. The lush-workers pay a percentage of their pillage, to what saloons they infest, for the privilege of lying in wait. Tricker pointed to the younger of the two women--about eighteen, she was. “Two years ago,” said Tricker, addressing the boiled barman, “I had her pinched an' turned over to the Aid Society. She's so young I thought mebby they could save her.” “Save her!” repeated the boiled one in weary disgust. “Youse can't save 'em. I used to try that meself. That was long ago. Now”--tossing his hand with a resigned air--“now, whenever I see a skirt who's goin' to hell, I pay her fare.” One of the three men was old and gray of hair. He used to be a gonoph, and had worked the rattlers and ferries in his youth. But he got settled a couple of times, and it broke his nerve. There is an age limit in pocket-picking. No pickpocket is good after he passes forty years; so far, Dr. Osier was right. Children from twelve to fourteen do the best work. Their hands are small and steady; their confidence has not been shaken by years in prison. There are twenty New York Fagins--the police use the Dickens name--training children to pick pockets. These Fagins have dummy subjects faked up, their garments covered with tiny bells. The pockets are filled--watch, purse, card-case, handkerchief, gloves. Not until a pupil can empty every pocket, without ringing a bell, is he fit to go out into the world and look for boobs. “If Indian Louie shows up,” remarked Tricker to the boiled-lobster barman, as he made ready to go, “tell him to blow 'round tomorry evenin' to One Hundred and Twenty-eight.” Working his careless way back to the Bowery, Tricker strolled north to where that historic thoroughfare merges into Third Avenue. In Great Jones Street, round the corner from Third Avenue, Paul Kelly kept the New Brighton. Tricker decided to look in casually upon this hall of mirth, and--as one interested--study trade conditions. True, there was a coolness between himself and Kelly, albeit, both being of the Five Points, they were of the same tribe. What then? As members of the gang nobility, had they not won the right to nurse a private feud? De Bracy and Bois Guilbert were both Crusaders, and yet there is no record of any lost love between them.