The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1895-02-14

starving humanity In which ne was
! hopelessly laundering, and anchored
In the harbor Of steady employment,
which assured him at least a place to
sleep and three Square meals a day,
and that was luxury at that time to
Pietro. ,'5.~..
However conscientious one might be
In giving each person his due, it would
be quite impossible to say that the
man who befriended him was actuated
IN so doing by unseltish motives. He
thought he saw in the gOod-looking con-
tiding ny an apprentice whose will
could be nodded by his own until he
developed into just such tool as he
required in his Scheming and he grasp
ed the opportunity OF becoming a mod
eler OF moral statuary. He was a skill
full artesan. Under his instructions,
the theoretical part Of which was al
ways aptly illush lated by the CORE
spending practice, Pietro mastered the
underlying principles . Of this new
branch Of education with readiness
that gave his employer unbounded sat
isfactiOn and which would have made
a moralist quail before the evidences
Of latent sin which might have lain
dormant in that boys nature, had not
just such circumstances combined to
draw it out.
Biff Billings business was decidedly
shady. There were several branches
Of it, each when looked at alone ap-
peari'"g to be little worse than the
others. He managed a hotel, which
presented as reputable front as any
other roOming house Of it's class in that
part Of the town, but there were scores
Of people who had put up for a time
at the Billings hostelry who could tell
tales Of impositions and barefaced rob-
berries perpetrated that ought to land
any man behind prison bars. There
was saloon connected with the estab-
lishment. The proprietor paid the city
the required license and threw people
out when they got too drunk to buy
any more, just as other we'll regulated
places did, but behind that cloak of
ultra-respectability there were more
crooked deals hatched' and consum-
mated than any other rendezvous in
town could lay claim to. People gam
bled there. too. Not the barrel-house
contingent but the upper crust of the
gaming fraternity. 1t was an excep-
tionally safe place, for Biff Billings
had lately commenced to nourish po-
litical aspirations and, though more
than one person who had been au-
thorized to protect the public and up
hold morality knew the details of out
rageous deeds performed there that
would put more than one universally
denounced dive to shame, his hand
and-glove relations with the powers
veniences of police surveillance and
!, >ntp md will
fear of molestation.
the hotel above and the gaming house
below was den about six feet high,
reached by means Of an outside stair
way leading up from the alley, and
that was let out to as many Italians
as could pack themselves away in the
loathsome quarters. Billings never in
quired how many human bodies took
refuge in the hot-bed of filth and in
EQUITY. There was a foreman of the
gang, who regularly paid the stipulated
amount Of the rent when due, and that
was all their landlord cared for.
The manipulating of these concerns
was the work into which Antonio
Pietro was Initiated and so readily
did he assimilate with surrounding con-
ditions that within month Billings
declared that he couldn't run his bust
ness without him, and laughingly
called him his ''side partner" a sobri-
quet by which he soon became known
to the habitues Of Billings place, and
which always chung to him.
There was one Infamous vocation
which his master pursued with relig-
ious regularity in which Pietro de-
clined to lend helping hand, and that
was wife-beating. But 10y dint Of con-
slant practice Billings had reduced
that trade to a fine art, and after
Pietros first Mortified refusal to put
in a blow or two, whenever needed,
he did not ask for his services in that
line again.
Billings wife was not a particularly
good woman. It would have been con-
trary to all the laws Of nature to ex-
pect her to walk through the fiery fur
mace Of sin for fifteen years with Bill
ings and his confreres and come out
holding fast to much goodness. But
for all her shortcomings there was a
fascination in her presence that drew
Pietro to her in strange, irresistible
fashion. 1t WIS not so much any dis
tinct indiv duality Of her own which
called forth his homage as the fact
that she was woman, a representa-
tive Of the same sex of which his
mother stood forth as a splendid type.
Pietro had not been very we'll tutored
in some things. and those qualities
which had combined to make his moth
err the perfection of womcnhood he
unconsciously ascribed to her kind in
general.
Billings wife OWNED his delusion
and humored him in it.
II guess your mother hasn't been
dead lorg?" she hazarded one day in
her rough italian, which she had pick
ed up from one source or another. It
was the first direct question she had
asked him concerning his past life,
and that was called forth by the ten
der, half-reverential way, in which he
involuntarily laid his hand on her right
cheek over the cash which Billings
had made that morning.
"A year." he said, filling up in way
he had of doing at times when the
thought Of the trial was brought d.
rectly before him. He sat down oppo-
site her at the table, and while he
drank his black coffee he turned auto