The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient
one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige with
age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal,
when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the disturbance
amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and threats and
recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it created was of
that electrical nature that might at any moment develop a storm.

Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been
actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the
alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine.
But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct
manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate
loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks.

The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that had
been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement
into the cathedral yard.

"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of a
barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight
outen 'em if we wanted to."

"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and a
brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie
knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh
down there, and I'll call the janitor!"

This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that