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PART II.

CHAPTER I. THE MURDER TRIAL.

BILLY BYRNE squared his broad shoulders and filled his deep lungs with the

familiar medium which is known as air in Chicago. He was standing upon the

platform of a New York Central train that was pulling into the La Salle Street

Station, and though the young man was far from happy something in the nature

of content pervaded his being, for he was coming home.

After something more than a year of world wandering and strange adventure Billy

Byrne was coming back to the great West Side and Grand Avenue.

Now there is not much upon either side or down the center of long and tortuous

Grand Avenue to arouse enthusiasm, nor was Billy particularly enthusiastic

about that more or less squalid thoroughfare.

The thing that exalted Billy was the idea that he was coming back to SHOW

THEM. He had left under a cloud and with a reputation for genuine toughness

and rowdyism that has seen few parallels even in the ungentle district of his birth

and upbringing.

A girl had changed him. She was as far removed from Billy's sphere as the stars

themselves; but Billy had loved her and learned from her, and in trying to become

more as he knew the men of her class were he had sloughed off much of the

uncouthness that had always been a part of him, and all of the rowdyism. Billy

Byrne was no longer the mucker.

He had given her up because he imagined the gulf between Grand Avenue and

Riverside Drive to be unbridgeable; but he still clung to the ideals she had

awakened in him. He still sought to be all that she might wish him to be, even

though he realized that he never should see her again.

Grand Avenue would be the easiest place to forget his sorrow--her he could never

forget. And then, his newly awakened pride urged him back to the haunts of his

former life that he might, as he would put it himself, show them. He wanted the

gang to see that he, Billy Byrne, wasn't afraid to be decent. He wanted some of

the neighbors to realize that he could work steadily and earn an honest living,

and he looked forward with delight to the pleasure and satisfaction of rubbing it

in to some of the saloon keepers and bartenders who had helped keep him drunk

some five days out of seven, for Billy didn't drink any more.

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The Mucker