Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the direction of the subconscious, that led David in his circuitous homeward journey, past St. Christopher's Mission. He was walking slowly along, the caution of the first part of his flight forgotten in the mixture of despair and shame that now possessed him, when he waded into pools of coloured light that lay upon the sidewalk and the street. He looked up. There, aglow with its inspiration, was the window to the memory of Philip Morton. He involuntarily stepped back a pace or two, and leaning against a stack of bricks designed for repairs in the Mission's basement, alone in the deserted street, he gazed steadfastly at the luminous words. He had often looked at that tribute, as he had upon the whole Mission, with a sense of thankfulness that his life was counting. But now there was no thankfulness within him. Anger began to burn, revolt to rise. That sainted man there was the cause of all his misery, all his degradation. The shame of his trial, the loss of his four prison years, the refusal of work, his insults, his lost strength, his lost character, his ragged clothes, his starving, his uttermost poverty, his uttermost despair--all these rushed upon him in one hot turbulent flood of rebellion. Of all these inflictions that man was directly the cause! And more--that man had made him a thief! And yet that man was worshipped as a saint--while he, he was a starving outcast! His resentment culminated in a wild impulse. His right hand clutched one of the bricks on which it rested, and he took a quick step forward. The brick crashed through Morton's glowing name. BOOK III TOWARD THE LIGHT CHAPTER I THE MAYOR OF AVENUE A Three or four blocks east of the Bowery and lying north of the Jewish quarter is a little region somewhat less crowded, somewhat quieter, somewhat more clean, than the rest of the tenement country that lies about it. It is held by Germans--Americanised Germans. But Poles and Magyars, Jews of Roumania, Hungary and Russia, are edging their way into it; such frequent signs as "_Gyogyszertár_," which, evil as it strikes the eye, signifies nothing more malignant than "drugstore," announce this invasion even to casual passers-by. Some day the region will know the children of Germany no more; it will be a Babel of the tongues of central Europe. But as yet, if you walk along its four avenues, A, B, C and D, all lined with little shops, or lounge about its shady Tompkin's Square, you will see many a face that will carry your memory back to Berlin and Cologne and the beer-gardens and Sunday promenades of their work-people and petty bourgeois.