"Perfectly." Bob's color had receded, but in no other way did he show his struggle for self-mastery. "My wife isn't having a baby to spite you, and if it ever needs a grandfather we'll adopt one." "They've pulled you down into the mud; now they've tied you there. Heredity's stronger than you or I; watch your child grow up, and watch its mother's blood tell. Then remember that I tried to free you before it was too late. Well, I'm through. This settles me. Good-by, and God help you with that rotten gang." Hannibal Wharton turned and strode out of the room shaking his head and mumbling. Jimmy Knight had fallen upon evil times. A combination of circumstances had seriously affected his mode of making a living, and that of his friends. To outward appearances the frequenters of Tony the Barber's place were as thrifty as usual, but in the pinochle-room at the rear there was gloom. Reason for these hard times lay in an upheaval of public sentiment that had galvanized the Police Department into one of its periodic spasms of activity, and the cause ran back to a sordid quarrel between two factions of the Tenderloin. At about the time when Jimmy came to New York the contention had become too bitter for the underworld to hold, and echoes of it had begun to leak out; later it culminated in the murder of the leader of one clique. Murders, it is true, are not uncommon in New York, but this one was staged in the glare of Broadway, and with a bold defiance of the law that aroused popular indignation. There followed a chain of fortuitous happenings that issued in the capture of the murderers, in a wide-spread exposure of social conditions, and in a great outburst of public indignation against a police system that allowed such abuses to exist. Of course there came a loud protest from the guardians of the law, a frantic waving of spotless banners, and a prating of virtue; but the popular will has a way of obtaining its desires regardless of red tape, trickery, or politics, and in this case it demanded a reorganization of the department and got it. Discipline suddenly strengthened, and as a result gambling almost ceased, wire-tapping languished, organized blackmail was conducted under cover: only crime in its crudest forms continued as usual; and it followed therefore that Jimmy Knight was not prosperous. Had it not been for his share in Bob's generosity he would have been forced to the distressing necessity of asking for employment--a thing to curdle his blood! It was characteristic of young Knight that he did not scruple to accept charity from the man he hated, although he cherished the memory of that public beating at Bob's hands and the humiliation of it gnawed him like a cancer. More than once lately Jim had been tempted to turn his knowledge of the Hammon "suicide" into cash, but he could think of no safe and certain means of doing so until one day Max Melcher dropped a bit of intelligence that promised to open a way.