"I don't dare go back," he said, breathlessly. "I don't dare do it;
killing's too good for the likes of Pike McGonegal, but I'm not
fighting babies. An' maybe, if I went back, maybe I wouldn't have the
nerve to leave her; I can't do it," he muttered, "I don't dare go
back." But still he did not stir, but stood motionless, with one hand
trembling on the stair-rail and the other clenched beside him, and so
fought it on alone in the silence of the empty building.
The lights in the stores below came out one by one, and the minutes
passed into half-hours, and still he stood there with the noise of the
streets coming up to him below speaking of escape and of a long life
of ill-regulated pleasures, and up above him the baby lay in the
darkness and reached out her hands to him in her sleep.
The surly old sergeant of the Twenty-first Precinct station-house had
read the evening papers through for the third time and was dozing in
the fierce lights of the gas-jet over the high desk when a young man
with a white, haggard face came in from the street with a baby in his
arms.
"I want to see the woman thet look after the station-house--quick," he
said.
The surly old sergeant did not like the peremptory tone of the young
man nor his general appearance, for he had no hat, nor coat, and his
feet were bare; so he said, with deliberate dignity, that the char-
woman was up-stairs lying down, and what did the young man want with
her? "This child," said the visitor, in a queer thick voice, "she's
sick.
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