excitement and adventure. These times were usually coincident

with an acute financial depression in Billy's change pocket,

and then he would fare forth in the still watches of the

night, with a couple of boon companions and roll a souse,

or stick up a saloon.

It was upon an occasion of this nature that an event

occurred which was fated later to change the entire course

of Billy Byrne's life. Upon the West Side the older gangs are

jealous of the sanctity of their own territory. Outsiders

do not trespass with impunity. From Halsted to Robey, and

from Lake to Grand lay the broad hunting preserve of Kelly's

gang, to which Billy had been almost born, one might say.

Kelly owned the feed-store back of which the gang had loafed

for years, and though himself a respectable businessman his

name had been attached to the pack of hoodlums who held

forth at his back door as the easiest means of locating and

identifying its motley members.

The police and citizenry of this great territory were the

natural enemies and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings

of old protected the deer of their great forests from poachers,

so Kelly's gang felt it incumbent upon them to safeguard

the lives and property which they considered theirs by divine

right. It is doubtful that they thought of the matter in just

this way, but the effect was the same.

And so it was that as Billy Byrne wended homeward alone

in the wee hours of the morning after emptying the cash

drawer of old Schneider's saloon and locking the weeping

Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeply grieved and