"To hell with you, you d——d ——! I know you and your d——d sort—I know what you want, and you'll get it in one minute. Out of my place, or I'll pitch you in the gutter or into a worse hole yet!" He made a gesture with one hand such as a cat makes with its claws out.
A big man with a hard gleam in his eye moved along the edge of the bar, his face stolid and his eyes on the newcomer, while the throng fell back suddenly and left the girl standing alone with a little space about her, her face pale, and her mouth drawn close under the unexpected assault. In another second she would, without doubt, have been thrown out of the place, or possibly borne off to that worse fate with which she had been threatened. But from the throng to her side stepped out a short, broad-shouldered man, with a sodden face.
"Speak her soft, Galley, —— —— you! You know who she is! That is the Angel of the Lost Children. Speak her soft or —— —— you! you'll have to throw me out, too." The sodden face took on suddenly a resolution that gave the rough a look of power, the broad shoulders were those of an athlete, and the steady eye was that of a man to be reckoned with—and such was "Red Talman" when aroused.
"Speak her soft, Galley."
The name he had given was repeated over the throng by many, doubtless, who had not heard of her, but there were others who knew, and told of the work that Eleanor Leigh had been doing in quarters where any other woman of her class and kind had never showed her face; of help here and there; a hand lent to lift a fallen girl; of succor in some form or another when all hope appeared to be gone.
It was a strange champion who had suddenly stepped forward into the arena to protect her, but the girl felt immediately that she was safe. She turned to her champion.