It was a cool evening in September. A dozen of Butch's young gons were knocking the balls about his pool tables. Butch himself was behind the bar. Outside in Willett Street a whistle sounded. Butch picked up a pistol off the drip-board, just in time to peg a shot at Harry the Soldier as that ill-used lover came through the front door. Dopey Benny, Jonathan to the other's David, was with Harry. Neither tried to shoot. Through a hail of lead from Butch's pistol, the two ran out the back door. No one killed; no one wounded. Butch had been shooting too high, as the bullet-raked ceiling made plain. Butch explained his wretched gun play by saying that he was afraid of pinking some valued one among his boy scouts. “At that,” he added, “it's just as well. Them wops 'll never come back. Now when they see I'm organized they'll stay away. There ain't no sand in them Sicilians.” Butch was wrong. Harry, with Dopey Benny, was back the next night. This time there was no whistle. Harry had sent forward a force of skirmishers to do up those sentinels, with whom Butch had picketed Willett' Street. Butch's earliest intimation that there was something doing came when a bullet from the gun of Harry broke his back. Dopey Benny stood off the public, while Harry put three more bullets into Butch. The final three were superfluous, however, as was shown at the inquest next day. The Darby Kid was abroad upon her professional duties as a gon-moll, when Harry hived Butch. Her absence was regretted by her former lover. “Because,” said he, as he and Dopey Benny fled down Stanton Street, “I'd like to have made the play a double header, and downed the Kid along wit' Butch.” It was not so written, however. Double headers, whatever the field of human effort, are the exception and not the rule of life. It was whispered that Harry the Soldier and Dopey Benny remained three days in the Pell Street room of Big Mike Abrams before their get-away. They might have been at the bottom of the lower bay, for all the Central Office knew. Butch was buried, and the Darby Kid wept over his grave. After which she cheered up, and came back smiling. There is no good in grief. Besides, it's egotistical, and trenches upon conceit. The Central Office declares that, equipped of the right papers, it will bring Harry the Soldier back from Africa. Also, it will go after Dopey Benny in Kanuckland, when his time is out. The chair--says the Central Office--shall yet have both. Old Jimmy doesn't think there's a chance, while the jaundiced Wop openly scoffs. Neither believes in the police. Meanwhile dark suspicions hover cloudily over the Darby Kid. Did she rap? She says not, and offers to pawn her soul. “Why should I?” asks the Darby Kid. “Of course I'd sooner it was Butch copped Harry. But it went the other way; an' why should I holler? Would beefin' bring Butch back?” XI.--BIG MIKE ABRAMS