Center Street.
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Endeavor Chapel.
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Nevertheless, he followed the policeman through the dirty alley back to the door.
"It’s a tough place, and she’s led a tough life," commented the officer, as they went up the broken steps.
Heaps of refuse and old bones and broken cans—the ever-present signs of squalor and poverty and unthrift—littered the untidy yard at the left. A hungry goat bleated in the enclosure in the rear. The morning smoke was rising from the chimneys of the surrounding shanties, and over the wretched scene a bright ray, breaking from a cloud and shining from the east heralded the coming sunrise.
The dead woman was reclining in a great chair in the squalid room where dissipation had ended a wretched life and death had claimed her. Bloated, ghastly and piteous to look upon, there still shone through the marks and lines which dissipation had scarred on the blighted face, some traces of the comeliness of her ruined youth.
And there, with the pitiless morning light on the haggard features, Uncle John saw and knew her. The last treasured remnant of his life’s romance crumbled to ashes, for the face he saw was the face of his lost love.
Mosher Street.
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Lyman Street School.
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The Depot of the River Road.
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School, Corner Center and Dwight Streets.
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© Laurel O’Donnell 1996 - 2006, all rights reserved
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This is an edited adaptation from the original publication.
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