Helen had but a few moments to wait on the sidewalk; yet within that short time something happened to change the entire current of the day’s adventures. She heard some boys shouting from the direction of the Bowery; there was a crowd crossing the street diagonally; she watched it with some apprehension at first, for it came right along the sidewalk toward her.
“Hi, fellers! See de Lurcher! Here comes de Lurcher!” yelled one ribald youth, who leaped on the stoop to which Helen had retreated the better to see over the heads of the crowd at the person who was the core of it.
And then Helen, in no little amazement, saw that this individual was none other than the man whom she had seen driven out of Fenwick Grimes’s office. A gang of hoodlums surrounded him. They jeered at him, tore at his ragged clothes, hooted, and otherwise nagged the poor old fellow.
At every halt he made they pressed closer upon the “Lurcher.” It was easy to see why he had been given that name. He was probably an old inhabitant of the neighborhood, and his lurching from side to side of the walk had suggested the nickname to some local wit.
Just as he steered for the rail of the step on which Helen stood, half fearful, and reached it, Sadie Goronsky came bounding out of the house. Instantly she took a hand—and as usual a master hand—in the affair.
“What you doin’ to that old man, you Izzy Strefonifsky? And, Freddie Bloom, you stop or I’ll tell your mommer! Ike, let him alone, or I’ll make your ears tingle myself—I can do it, too!”
Sadie charged as she commanded. The hoodlums scattered—some laughing, some not so easily intimidated. But the old man was clinging to the rail and muttering over and over to himself:
“They got my dollar—they got my dollar.”
“What’s that?” cried Sadie, coming back after chasing the last of the boys off the block. “What’s the matter, Mr. Lurcher?”
“My dollar—they got my dollar,” muttered the old man.