money to pay their way with. That is why they must sleep here or on the street.
Bidding the old hag good morning, we next visit a huge three or four story building, with a large area in the centre, and galleries all around the inside, cut up into almost innumerable little rooms, which are let, furnished, at so much per month, to the "pretty beer-slingers" and their male companions. Every girl attending in the beer-cellars has a male friend—sometimes her husband, but not often—who fights her battles, robs her of her earnings, and not unfrequently plunders, by collusion with her, the inebriated green-horns whom she entices into her den after the deadfall has closed for the night.
Bang! bang! bang! What was that? We hear the sharp whistle of a policeman and several answering whistles, and run out to the street to see what is going on. The story is soon told. An officer has met three well-known thieves skulking through an alley with something in bags on their backs. On general principles, he orders them to halt, and is answered with a staggering blow with a slungshot by one of them. To draw his revolver and let fly at each in succession is the work of an instant. One of the desperadoes is shot through the heart and falls dead in his tracks; one is lying on the ground with his right thigh-bone shivered by the bullet, so that it will require amputation; and the third, barely hit in the side, has thrown up his hands, and stands waiting for the irons to be put on him. The police clear the field of action in a few minutes, and on searching the bags find
