The step was slow and uncertain. It seemed to consider well before each movement forward, but it had a character that reassured her. It was the same sort of step with which her father was wont to return home after his occasional carouses, and she knew that whoso walked in that fashion was, so long as one kept out of reach, not greatly to be feared. She remained hidden until the step drew nearer, until the dark bulk of the drunkard slowly massed itself out of the surrounding darkness, until it had brushed by her. Then she spoke. "Can you tell me," she asked, "if there's a Miss Flanagan lives here?" The passerby was not in a condition where voices from nowhere seemed remarkable. He stopped and, evidently not clear as to just whence this particular voice proceeded, addressed the air immediately before him. "I can so," he said. "Then will you, please?" "Will I what?" responded the passerby, determined that the air should be more specific. "Will you please _tell_ me?" "Tell you what?" "Is there a Miss Flanagan lives here?" "There is that. There's three of her, an' wan of thim's a Missus. Good-night." Awkwardly he touched his hat to the air and stumbled out into the alley. Violet breathed hard. She had never in her life before been in a tenement-house; but she knew that now she must seek a door through which some ray of light gave hint of waking persons within and, knocking, of them inquire anew. Around her, all the doors were forbidding, so, timidly and with a hand tight upon the shaking rail, she softly climbed the decrepit stairs. At the second floor a shaft of yellow light stopped her. Here was a door that was open, and beyond it, by an uncovered deal table on which stood a rude kerosene lamp, sat two figures: the figure of an old woman, her gnarled hands clasped loosely in her aproned lap, her dim eyes gazing at the sightless window, and the figure of a young woman, her hands beneath her round chin, her wide eyes on a naked baby quietly sleeping in a clothes-basket at her knee. The floor was uncarpeted, the walls unadorned, the room almost bare of furniture; but on the face of her that looked into the past and in the face of her that looked into the future there was peace. A quick stroke of pain stabbed the onlooker's heart, but she dragged herself ahead and, not to disturb the baby, spoke without knocking. The old woman turned, and Violet noticed that the eyes which could see so far behind were blind and could see no step forward. The mother, however, spoke kindly and gave the directions that the girl needed; but Violet, wanting to say something about the baby in return, and, able only to murmur formal thanks, pursued her climb upward. She found at last the door that she was certain must be Katie Flanagan's, but, when she had found it, all power of further motion suddenly ceased. Weakness, shame, and fear swept over her like a cloud of evil gases from an endangered mine, and she swayed against the panel before her.