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. The city had long since
hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur
were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and the
imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway.

In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt
the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The
complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling.
Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in
life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into
eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of an
initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny.