scream, thrusting her dirty hands through her still dirtier hair as the proper accompanying gesture to her vituperative oratory.

"Will I! Will I!" she screeched. "Will I let out my hown babby for the night for nothing? Will I? No, I won't! I'll see yer blowed into the middle of next week fust! Lor' a' mussey! 'ow 'igh an' mighty we are gittin' to be sure! The babby'll be quiet with you, Miss Liz; will it hindeed! An' it will cry an' fret with its hown mother; will it hindeed!" And at every sentence she approached Liz more nearly, increasing in fury as she advanced. "Yer low hussey! D'ye think I'd let yer 'ave my babby for a hour unless yer paid for't? As it is yer pays far too little. I'm a honest woman as works for my livin' an' wot drinks reasonable, better than you by a long sight, with your stuck-up airs! A pretty drab you are! Gi' me the babby; ye an't no business to keep it a minit longer;" and she made a grab at Liz's sheltering shawl.

"Oh, don't hurt it!" pleaded Liz tremblingly. "Such a little thing; don't hurt it!"

Mother Mawks stared so wildly that her blood-shot eyes seemed protruding from her head.

""Urt it! Hain't I a right to do wot I likes with my hown babby! 'Urt it! Well I never! Look 'ere!" and she turned round on the assembled neighbours. "Haint she a reg'lar one! She don't care for the law,

not she! She's keepin' back a child from its hown mother!" And with that she made a fierce attack on the shawl and succeeded in dragging the infant from Liz's reluctant arms. Wakened thus roughly from its slumbers, the poor mite set up a feeble wailing; its mother, enraged at the sound, shook it violently till it gasped for breath.

"Drat the little beast!" she cried. choke an' 'ave done with it!"

"Why don't it

And without heeding the terrified remonstrances of Liz she flung the child roughly, as though it were a ball, through the open door of her lodging, where it fell on a heap of dirty clothes, and lay motionless; its wailing had ceased.

"Oh, baby, baby!" exclaimed Liz in accents of poignant distress. "Oh! you have killed it I am sure! Oh, you are cruel, cruel! Oh baby, baby!"

And she broke into a tempestuous passion of sobs and tears. The bystanders looked on in unmoved silence. Mother Mawks gathered her torn garments round her with a gesture of defiance, and sniffed the air as though she said, "Any one who wants to meddle with me will get the worst of it." There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came,—a massively-built, ill-favoured brute with a shock of uncombed red hair and small ferret-like eyes. He stared

stupidly at the weeping Liz, then at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood by.

"Wot's the row?" he demanded thickly. "Wot's up? 'Ave it out fair! Joe Mawks'll stand by an' see fair game. Fire away, my hearties! fire, fire away!" And with a chuckling idiot laugh he dived into the pocket of his torn corduroy trousers and produced a pipe. Filling this leisurely from a greasy pouch, with such unsteady fingers that the tobacco dropped all over him, he lit it, repeating with increased thickness of utterance "Wot's the row? 'Ave it out fair!"

"It's about your babby, Joe!" cried the girl beforementioned, jumping up from her seat on the ground with such force that her hair came tumbling all about her in a dark dank mist through which her thin eager face spitefully peered. "Liz has gone crazy! She wants your babby to cuddle!" And she screamed with sudden laughter, "Eh, eh! fancy! Wants a babby to

cuddle!"

The stupefied Joe blinked drowsily and sucked the stem of his pipe with apparent relish. Then as if he had been engaged in deep meditation on the subject, he removed his smoky consoler from his mouth and said, "W'y not? Wants a babby to cuddle? All right! Let 'er 'ave it—w'y not?"

At these words Liz looked up hopefully through

her tears, but Mother Mawks darted forward in raving indignation.

"Yer great drunken fool!" she yelled to her besotted spouse, "aren't yer ashamed of yerself? Wot! Let out yer babby a whole night for nuthin'? It's lucky I've got my wits about me; an' I say Liz shan't 'ave it! There now!"

The man looked at her and a dogged resolution darkened his repulsive countenance. He raised his big fist, clenched it, and hit straight out, giving his infuriated. wife a black eye in much less than a minute. "An' I say she shall 'ave it! Wheer are ye now?"

In answer to this

query Mother Mawks might have said that she was "all there," for she returned her husband's blow with interest and force, and in a couple of seconds the happy pair were engaged in a "stand-up" fight, to the intense admiration and excitement of the inhabitants of the little alley. Every one in the place thronged to watch the combatants and to hear the blasphemous oaths and curses with which the battle was accompanied. In the midst of the affray, a wizened, bent old man, who had been sitting at his door sorting rags in a basket, and apparently taking no heed of the clamour around him, made a sign to Liz.

"Nobody'll

"Take the kid now," he whispered. notice. I'll see they don't come arter ye." Liz thanked him mutely by a look, and rushing to the house where

the child still lay, seemingly inanimate, on the floor among the soiled clothes, she caught it up eagerly and hurried away to her own poor garret in a tumble-down tenement at the furthest end of the alley. The infant had been stunned by its fall, but under her tender care, and rocked in the warmth of her caressing arms, it soon recovered, though when its blue eyes opened they were full of a bewildered pain such as may be seen in the eyes of a shot bird.

"My pet! my poor little darling!" she murmured over and over again, kissing its wee white face and soft hands; "I wish I was your mother-Lord knows I do! As it is you're all I've got to care for. And you do love me, baby, don't you? just a little, little bit!" And as she renewed her fondling embraces, the tiny, sadvisaged creature uttered a low crooning sound of baby satisfaction in response to her endearments,- a sound more sweet to her ears than the most exquisite music, and which brought a smile to her mouth and a pathos to her dark eyes, rendering her face for the moment almost beautiful. Holding the child closely to her breast, she looked cautiously out of her narrow window, and perceived that the connubial fight was over. From the shouts of laughter and plaudits that reached her ears Joe Mawks had evidently won the day; his wife had disappeared from the field. She saw the little crowd dispersing, most of those who composed it entering the