He reached the Old Brewery at last. The ancient distillery was now a vast ant hill of swarming misery. In every dirty room, in the grimy cellars beneath it, the victims of want, of disease, of vice slept or quarreled, vomited aloud, whimpered in sickness, or died half-naked and half-noticed. In front of it was a little barren triangle of ground, surrounded by a wooden fence usually draped with filthy clothes. They mocked it with the name of “Paradise Square.” He glanced into the dark and stinking alley known as Murderers’ Lane, but he dared not thrid it. Baffled and revolted he returned to Broadway, a Dante coming up from the pit of horror. If Molly were in the Points she was beyond redemption. If she were in a higher circle of hell, she would not listen to him. She might be exploiting her youth in one of the secret “Model Artist” exhibitions of nude men and women. She might be a banker’s friend, a street vendor, a cigar girl, a barmaid, a chambermaid in a hotel or a boarding house or in an honest home. She might have thrown herself in one of the rivers. What else could a girl do for respite from hunger and loneliness but go into menial service, or into the most ancient profession, or into the grave? The stage was the only other open door except the convent, and Molly had probably no genius for either life. At any rate, he could not hope to find this one among the thousands of New York’s “lost” women by seeking for her. He went slowly to his home in St. John’s Square, despondent and morose, feeling himself soiled by his mere inspection of the muck heap. Afterward he kept his eyes alert for Molly, but it was months before he found her. She had been dragged into court for working the panel-crib game. She was not only a wanton, but a thief; using her grace and her jocund prettiness to entice fools within the reach of confederates who slid aside a panel in a wall and made off with their wallets after the classic method. She lured the wrong man once, a fellow who had no reputation to lose and did not hesitate to set up a cry that brought the watch. When she was arraigned, RoBards happened to be in court on behalf of another client. He saw Molly pink and coquettish, impudently fascinating, and so ready for deportation or conquest that when he advanced to her, she accepted him as a gallant before she recognized him as a neighbor. “Aren’t you Molly Lasher?” RoBards asked. “I was.” “What are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m on the cross.” He knew that she was “pattering the flash” for being in thievery; but he answered solemnly: “Your mother is on the Cross, too, Molly.” “Poor old thing! I’m sorry for her, but it don’t do her no good for me to hang there with her.” He entreated her to go home, and promised that the judge would free her at his request, but Molly was honest enough to say: “It wouldn’t work, Mister RoBards. I ain’t built for that life. I’ve outgrowed it.”