But all these were just stories--no more.

Down in this quarter of New York nicknames come easily, and once applied they adhere to the end.
Some believed that she was now the mere ashes of a woman, in whom lived only the last flickering spark.

And some believed that beneath that drab and spent appearance there smouldered a great fire, which might blaze forth upon some occasion.

But no one knew.

As she was now, so she had always been even in the memory of people considered old in the neighborhood.
Beside the fact that she ran a pawnshop, which was reputed to be also a fence, there were only two or three other facts that were known to her neighbors.