"Now, Miss Marsh--say one word more and I'll go and kill him! Dismiss Zacharie and all the others from your mind. Why--they are not worthy to breathe the same air as you. If you don't brighten up and forget all about them I'll do something desperate. Anyhow, I came here to-night on a desperate errand. It was to remind you of a promise." "A promise--what promise?" "Didn't you say that you would take me down to the slums one day?" "Yes, I did." "Well, I'm ready to go. When shall it be?" The young girl hesitated a moment. Then she said: "To-morrow's an interesting day. There are classes at the Settlement home and house visits among the poor." Holding up a finger, she added warningly: "Mind, it isn't exactly fun. You'll see a new phase of life, something you do not know--the appalling misery and sordid wretchedness of a great, careless city." "That's immense!" cried Tod, rising enthusiastically. "I'll come for you to-morrow. What time?" "About eleven o'clock," she smiled. CHAPTER XI. The Bowery, that Broadway of the slums, odoriferous sink of cosmopolitan pauperism, degradation, and crime, wore its familiar, everyday aspect of ugly squalor and vice--grimy, dilapidated rookeries, dark, sinister hallways, filthy, greasy pavements littered with decayed fruit skins, gutters choked up with offensive black slime, suspicious-looking characters, abominable stenches of sauerkraut and stale beer which offended the nostrils on every side. On the slender rails high overhead occasional trains crashed by with a sullen roar; in the middle of the roadway rushing trolley cars noisily clanged their warning gongs, while on either sidewalk stretching as far south as the City Hall cheap clothing shops, tough saloons, low dance halls, pawnbrokers, penny arcades, vaudeville shows, displayed their gaudy signs. Up and down pushed and jostled a perspiring and motley crowd--bearded Jew peddlers, pallid sweat-shop workers, Chinese, flashily dressed "toughs," furtive-eyed pickpockets, sailors on shore leave, factory girls, painted street walkers, slouching longshoremen, tattered tramps, derelicts of both sexes--an appalling host of unkempt, unwashed, evil-smelling humanity.