She murmurs something. She is pale-faced with sullen eyes, drooping
mouth, an over-hanging lip. A sad red feather droops in her hat.

"Proceed," says the judge; and to the policeman who is called as a
witness, "You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth mm-mm-mm--you
are a plain-clothes man attached to the 16th Precinct detailed by the
central office, what about this woman?"

"At the corner of Fifteenth Street and Irving Place," says the
witness, "between the hours of 10:05 and 10:15 this evening I watched
this woman stop and speak to three different men. I know her, she has
been here before your Honor."

"What do you say?" the judge asks the woman. She is silent.

"What do you work at?"

"Housework, your Honor."

"Always housework; it is surprising how many houseworkers come before
me." She smiles a sickly smile.

"Take her record. Next case," says the judge. Outside it is a cold
sleeting night in early March.

"Witnesses in case of Nellie Farrel," calls the clerk.

Nellie Farrel stands before the desk beside a policeman; she is tall
with fair waving hair. She must have been pretty once; even now there