He was in a narrow street of two-storied houses, low houses with green venetian blinds on the windows of some of them, their street doors opened wide, lights in all the front, ground-floor windows. But the street itself was in darkness on account of the drizzling rain. An odd woman flitted along. A few men walked about uncertainly. The street had a gloomy deserted look. But from the houses a medley of joyous sound issued. Gypo looked on for a moment excitedly. Then he walked down the street slowly, examining each house as he passed. He knew Katie Fox was by now at Biddy Burke’s. He wanted to avoid Biddy Burke’s. Biddy Burke’s house was over on the other side. He didn’t want to go there to-night. It was only a poor place, used by revolutionaries and criminals of the working-class type. The women there were an ugly, ill-dressed, whisky-drinking lot. He was well known there. He knew all the women. There was only Guinness’s stout on sale and even that was so diluted and ghastly that it was like drinking castor oil. The more a man drank of it the thirstier he became. A shilling a drink for poison like that! Yah! Away with Biddy Burke and Katie Fox and Sligo Cissie and the rest of them! To-night he wanted to go somewhere where he was not known. He wanted to go among beautiful women. Strange, beautiful women clothed in silk! Mad women! Women with dark, flashing eyes and sharp, white teeth! Huh! He wanted to go mad. It was a mad night. There was fire in his blood. His hands wanted to rip mountains. He would swallow tankards of drink. He would drain this vast reservoir of strength from his body. He must or he would burst. Already he felt a desire to beat his head against walls. For six months he had been walking about a beggar, cut off from pleasure, subject to Katie Fox’s charity. Phew! She was no longer attractive to him, that bag of bones who thought of nothing but dope. Suddenly, without thinking, breathing heavily, flushed, excited like a man inhaling chloroform, he staggered through a doorway. He stood in a long, dark hall. He could hear laughter and drunken singing coming from his right, a few yards down the hall, from behind a door through which a glint of light came. He strode to the door. He tried to lift the latch and walk in, but the door was bolted. Almost instantly the sounds ceased. He kicked at the bottom of the door with his boot several times. “Who’s that?” came a woman’s voice angrily. “Open the door an’ find out,” answered Gypo in a shout. “Wait a minute, Betty,” came a husky man’s voice; “lemme out.” There was shuffling and whispering. “Keep well behind it,” said somebody else. Then the bolt was withdrawn. The latch was lifted carefully. The door opened slowly about three inches. Gypo watched these proceedings nervously and angrily. “Come on, come on,” he cried at last, “what’s all this monkey trickin’ about? Why don’t ye open the door wide and take yer mug outa the way?”