Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II MOLLY TELLS THE STORY THE Black Eagle Building is part-way downtown—not one of the skyscrapers that crowd together on the tip of the Island's tongue and not one of the advance guard squeezing in among the mansions of the rich, darkening their windows and spoiling their chimney draughts—poor, suffering dears ! As I came up the subway stairs I could see it bulking up above the roofs, a long narrow shape, with its windows shining in the sun. It stood on a corner presenting a great slab of wall to the side street and its front to Broadway. There were two entrances, the main one —with an eagle in a niche over the door—on Broadway, and a smaller one on the side street. There is only one other very high building near there—the Massasoit —facing on Fifth Avenue, its back soaring above the small houses that look like a line of children's toys. My way was along the side street, chilled by the shadow of the building, and as I passed the small entrance I stopped and looked up. The wall rose like a rampart, story over story, the windows as similarand even as cells in a honeycomb. Way up, the cornice cut the blue with its dark line. It was from that height the suicide had jumped. I thought of him there, standing on the window ledge, making ready to leap. Ugh! it was too horrible! I shuddered and walked on, pressing my chin into my fur and putting the picture out of my mind. When I turned the corner into Broadway it was brighter. The sun was shining on the outspread wings of the eagle in his niche and turning the icicles that hung from the window ledges into golden fringes. Near the entrance a man in a checked jumper and peaked cap was breaking away the bits of ice that stuck to the sidewalk with a long-handled thing like a spade. And all about were people, queer, mangy...