If
there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my
direction!"
And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared into the
dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first against her
charge, then against the tyranny of the law.
CHAPTER II
THE SNAWDORS AT HOME
If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was
Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went
rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this
unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam had
been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending them out
again into the main current.
For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the
great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it
echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear the
murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the
least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious,
Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the
cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues
that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance
over its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very
shadow of its cross.
At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering
warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten
day had been a fine old colonial residence.
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