"Of course not." His steel-gray eyes looked into hers, and they both laughed. Gordon asked the warden's permission to see the woman whose letter had brought him and also the young man who had returned from Sing Sing for a new trial. "What is the charge against the woman?" he asked. "Shoplifting, sir. She's been here before and begged off. But they are going to send her up this time. I'll allow her to see you in the reception room." She came in, with a poor attempt at dignity, and then collapsed into whining but hopeful lying. She was dressed in an old sunburnt frock. Her hair was tousled, her shoes untied, and a corset-string was hanging outside her skirt. Her front teeth were out, and the red blotches on her face told the story of drink and drugs. "Doctor, it's all a mistake. I swear to you I am innocent. You don't know how it humiliates me for you to see me like this--you, who knew me in the old days at home, when I was rich and petted and loved. And now I haven't a friend in the world. My husband left me. If you will tell them to let me off, they will do it for your sake. I swear to you I will leave New York, go back to my old home and try to begin life over again." She buried her face in her hands. "What shall I do?" he whispered to Kate. "She is lying. She will never leave New York." "Promise her--promise her; I'll try to do something for her." They passed inside, along Murderers' Row, and stopped before the cell in which stood the man waiting his new trial. He poured out his story again, and as Gordon looked sadly through the bars at his face the certainty of his guilt gave the lie to every fair word. As his glib tongue rattled on, Gordon's mind was farther and farther away. He was thinking of that grim sentence from the old Bible, "Sin when it is full grown bringeth forth death." And again this problem of sin, the wilful and persistent violation of known law, threw its shadow for a moment over his dream of social brotherhood. The voice of the man angered him. He frowned, bade him good-by and left. And as he passed out, he felt, in spite of the charm of Kate's companionship, the shadow of that veiled mother by his side, and heard the bitter cries of her broken heart, until the sin and shame of the man seemed his own. The pity and pathos of it all haunted and filled him with vague forebodings.--"Now for something more cheerful," he said, as they passed out of the Tombs and boarded an uptown car. "A derrick at work in that wreck yesterday fell on a working-man. He has a wife and four children. We must see how he is getting on." They got off on the Bowery, turned down a cross street toward the East River, threading their way through the masses of people jamming the sidewalks, and dodging missiles from dirty children screaming and romping at play. "Mercy!" exclaimed Kate, "I thought Broadway and Fifth Avenue and the shopping districts crowded--but this is beyond belief! I didn't know there were so many people in the world."