"A man that kept a saloon paid him five dollars, and he did it. Any of the policemen will take a person up for five dollars. When I came here I wasn't doing anything out of the way; but, of course, they knew what I had done." "What did the saloon man want you taken up for?" "Because I wouldn't tend for him. He had tried to get me in there, and I wouldn't go." "Why wouldn't you go? Wouldn't it have been better for you to earn an honest living?" "An honest living! I'd had to gone with any man he said if I'd gone there, and I rather choose my own friends." "O, Annie, how can you stand there, and tell this over? I should think your heart would burst with grief when you think of it!" "O pshaw! it's nothing when you get used to it!" said Lissett, and snapping her fingers at the imagination that O'Brien had called up, she flounced out of the room. But for all that, I saw that she choked as she said it, and the tears came in her eyes. "I hadn't got quite so used to it as to go to that pitch," said O'Brien. And where are the men that make these women what they are? I asked myself. Coolly walking the streets outside the terrors of the law. At that moment I could have locked all of mankind in solitary, and fed them on bread and water, without suffering one pang. Is there no help for this state of things, that the weak suffer for the sins of the strong? If man does not meet his punishment here he is borne on, by time, to judgment, where he will have no power to screen his guilty acts or shift his punishment upon the helpless. That reflection did not satisfy me at the time. A more summary retribution would be better suited to the sin. One that would inflict immediate tribulation and anguish upon him, such as had fallen upon his victims. Annie turned again to look out of the window. "There is but one woman taking a ride in the fancy carriage of the government. Exercise in that carriage is excellent for dyspepsia." "Do you know her?" asked Allen. "No! she's a jail-bird, I know, by her looks. She's come from the Superior Court; she'll have a long sentence. She's coming through the kitchen." Annie sprang down to look at her, and all of the rest followed her to the door which stood open, into the garden, for the men to bring in the bread for supper. "Stand back! It isn't necessary for you to give her a welcome." The newly arrived had her veil drawn tightly down over her face; but I could see that she was young, and very good looking. In the absence of the female Receiving Officer I took her from the Clerk, and waited upon her to the reception room where she was stripped of her own clothes, and put into a bathing-tub. When she was thoroughly scrubbed and dried, she was arrayed in the uniform of the place, and sent to the shop. There her capabilities were tried, and she was assigned to the work for which she was best adapted.