"Do? Don't you know?"
I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the child.
"Look here—are you a good gel?" she said.
Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so
"'Ope? Don't you know that neither?"
Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:
"Yes."
She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:
"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how they done it, though."
I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as if by broken lights from hell, of the life behind—the wrecked hope, the shattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last turned into one.