a revolver. Tact would be needed this night; with perhaps straight hitting, and the threat of a shot sent wide. The side-street, with its one lamp at the corner, was given over to a cow cropping grass by the foot-path; but the next flickered with lanterns and roared with sound as the two ran into it. The bleared red eye above Phelan’s door rocked where someone struck the lamp-edge with a stick, chanting a song that made Murray’s ears flame. Purdey’s grip held his arm.
“You’ll get kiboshed if you jump into that,” he said. “They’re drunk as lords. Let him sing. There’s no one at Phelan’s but the old man; and Cox is a pretty muddy puddle if he can harm Phelan. Oh, by Jove! Ring those lassies off———”
The three girls paused on the curb, and lifted a hymn, sweet and clear. By order of the belief which they serve, it is the lassies who pray on the street comers; standing pitiful and unafraid, among the rinsings that wash through all townships, and out again into the unknown. And there is no man so sinful but he will respect the lassies—unless the hand of drink is too heavy on him. From Blake’s bar-parlour Randal heard the first notes of the hymn, and the shout of coarse laughter that followed.
“Come on,” he said, and no more. But eight men pelted after him over the street.
