Chapter I

One by one the city clocks chimed the hour of midnight. One by one Jane counted the strokes and sighed despairingly as she glanced at the window in which the light still burned so brightly. The air was bitter cold, a fine snow was falling, and she had been trudging up and down, up and down, for ages it seemed to her. Richard was growing so heavy and her arms ached so she could scarcely hold him. Still, there was nothing for it but to tramp up and down, up and down the narrow street, the baby in her arms, until mother should give the welcome signal. When that lamp in the window opposite was put out and the house in darkness, she would know that it was safe for her to creep up the stairs and into the bed in the kitchen which she shared with the baby brother now sleeping in her arms.

Seating herself upon a doorstep she was passing, Jane shifted the baby to a more comfortable position and leaned her head against the rough woodwork of the tenement house. How tired, she was, how very tired! Her head ached, her back ached, she ached all over. Day after day, she worked in the factory from early morning until nightfall. Night after night, she walked the street with Richard in her arms, not daring to enter the house until father was safely sleeping. Of course it did not happen every night. Just once in a while father would come home sober and then there was no fear of harm to the baby or herself. Many a night, too, he did not come home at all, but on those occasions she and mother scarce dared to close an eye. They knew not at what moment he might return, possibly in even an uglier mood than usual. Mother was never afraid for herself. She could usually manage him, although there had been times when bad cuts and bruises bore testimony to the treatment to which she had been subjected. For Jane and little Richard, their only chance lay in keeping out of the way, so Jane would tramp the street, Richard in her arms, despite aches and pains and weariness.

The child on the doorstep anxiously watched the window across the way. Would the light never go out? Father must be unusually bad to-night, and she was so tired. The day had been a hard one at the factory and every bone in her body ached. Well, there was one comfort; to-morrow would be Sunday and she could stay at home all day. To-morrow? To-day, rather, for midnight had already passed. She would have one long day to rest and help mother. She felt now as if she could sleep the whole day through. She would like to sleep for a week at least, and even then she would not be rested quite enough. There were moments of unusual fatigue and depression in which she could almost wish that she might fall asleep and sleep forever as the other little ones had done. Three of them there were, delicate, sickly little creatures, who had struggled for a time against the ills of human existence and then given up the unequal conflict. At times, she could almost find it in her heart to envy them were it not for mother and Richard, especially Richard.

There, at last! The light was gone, the window in darkness, and it was safe for her to return to the tenement across the way.