"By-and-by," said the matron, and her rum-reeking breath came full in the girl's face. The matron was drunk. For an hour she confided to Rhona the history of her married life, and each time that Rhona dared cry, "I want to send a message!" she replied, "By-and-by." But after an hour was ended, she remembered. "Message? Sure! Fifty cents!" Rhona clutched the edge of the door. "Telephone--I want to telephone!" "Telephone!" shrieked the matron. "Do yer think we keep a telephone for the likes of ye?" "But I haven't fifty cents--besides, a message doesn't cost fifty cents--" "Are yer telling _me_?" the matron snorted. "Fifty cents! Come now, hurry," she wheedled. "Yer know as yer has it! Oh, it's in good time you come!" Her last words were addressed to some one behind her. The cell door was quickly opened; Rhona's arm was seized by John, the policeman, and without words she was marched to the curb and pushed into the patrol wagon with half a dozen others. The wagon clanged through the cold, dark streets, darting through the icy edge of the wind, and the women huddled together. Rhona never forgot how that miserable wagonful chattered--that noise of clicking teeth, the pulse of indrawn sighs, and the shivering of arms and chests. Closer and closer they drew, as if using one another as shields against the arctic onslaught, a couple of poor women, and four unsightly prostitutes, the scum of the lower Tenderloin. One woman kept moaning jerkily: "Wisht I was dead--down in my grave. It's bitter cold--" The horses struck sparks against the pave, the wheels grided, and the wagon-load went west, up the shadowy depths of Sixth Avenue, under the elevated structure, and stopped before Jefferson Market Court. The women were hustled out and went shuddering through long corridors, until at last they were shoved into a large cell. * * * * * At about the same moment Myra and Joe emerged from the West Tenth Street house and started for the court-house. They started, bowing their heads in the wind, holding on to their hats. "Whew!" muttered Joe. "This is a night!" Myra did not dare take his arm, and he spoke a little gruffly. "Better hang on to me." She slipped her arm through his then, gratefully, and tried to bravely fight eastward with him. Joe was silent. He walked with difficulty. Myra almost felt as if she were leading him. If she only could have sent him home, nursed him and comforted him! He was so weary that she felt more like sending him to bed than dragging him out in this bitter weather. More and more painfully he shuffled, and Myra brooded over him as if he were hers, and there was a sad joy in doing this, a sad glory in leading him and sharing the cruel night with him. In this way they gained the corner of Sixth Avenue. Across the way loomed the illuminated tower-topped brick court-house. "Here it is," said Joe.