who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and
on whose decease I had heard Mother say she
would come into a whole court-full of houses
"if she had her rights." Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold
bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the
damp cellar-floor walking over my grandfather's
body, so to speak, into the court-full of houses,
and selling them for meat and drink and clothes
to wear.

At last a change came down into our cellar.
The universal change came down even as low as
that—so will it mount to any height on which
a human creature can perch—and brought
other changes with it.

We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter
in the darkest corner, which we called "the
bed." For three days Mother lay upon it without
getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If
I had ever heard her laugh before, it had been so
seldom that the strange sound frightened me.
It frightened Father, too, and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to
move her head from side to side, and sing.
After that, she getting no better, Father fell a-
laughing and a-singing, and then there was only
I to give them both water, and they both died.

          FOURTH CHAPTER.

When I was lifted out of the cellar by two
men, of whom one came peeping down alone
first, and ran away and brought the other, I
could hardly bear the light of the street. I was
sitting in the roadway, blinking at it, and at a
ring of people collected around me, but not
close to me, when, true to my character of
worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying,
"I am hungry and thirsty!"

"Does he know they are dead?" asked one
of another.

"Do you know your father and mother are
both dead of fever?" asked a third of me,
severely.

"I don't know what it is to be dead. I
supposed it meant that, when the cup rattled
against their teeth and the water spilt over
them. I am hungry and thirsty." That was
all I had to say about it.

The ring of people widened outward from the
inner side as I looked around me; and I smelt
vinegar, and what I now know to be camphor,
thrown in towards where I sat. Presently
some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar
on the ground near me, and then they all looked
at me in silent horror as I ate and drank
of what was brought for me. I knew at
the time they had a horror of me, but I couldn't
help it.

I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur
of discussion had begun to arise respecting what
was to be done with me next, when I heard a
cracked voice somewhere in the ring say: "My
name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of
West Bromwich." Then the ring split in one
place, and a yellow-faced peak-nosed gentleman,
clad all in iron-grey to his gaiters,
pressed forward with a policeman and another
official of some sort. He came forward close toth
vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he
sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously.

"He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this
young boy: who is just dead, too," said Mr.
Hawkyard.

I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said
in a ravening manner: "Where's his houses?"

"Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of
the grave," said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of
the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out
of me. "I have undertaken a slight—a ve-ry
slight—trust in behalf of this boy; quite a
voluntary trust; a matter of mere honour, if
not of mere sentiment; still I have taken it
upon myself, and it shall be (O yes, it shall be!)
discharged."

The bystanders seemed to form an opinion
of this gentleman, much more favourable than
their opinion of me.

"He shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard
"(O yes, he shall be taught!); but what is to
be done with him for the present? He may be
infected. He may disseminate infection." The
ring widened considerably. "What is to be
done with him?"

He held some talk with the two officials. I
could distinguish no word save "Farm-house."
There was another sound several times repeated,
which was wholly meaningless in my ears then,
but which I knew soon afterwards to be
"Hoghton Towers."

"Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard, "I think that
sounds promising. I think that sounds hopeful.
And he can be put by himself in a Ward, for a
night or two, you say?"

It seemed to be the police-officer who had
said so, for it was he who replied Yes. It was
he, too, who finally took me by the arm and
walked me before him through the streets, into
a whitewashed room in a bare building, where I
had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron
bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a
rug and blanket to cover me. Where I had
enough to eat, too, and was shown how to clean
the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to
me, until it was as good as a looking-glass.
Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had new
clothes brought to me, and my old rags were
burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared, and
disinfected in a variety of ways.

When all this was done—I don't know in how
many days or how few, but it matters not—
Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, remaining
close to it, and said:

"Go and stand against the opposite wall,
George Silverman. As far off as you can. That'll
do. How do you feel?"

I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't
feel hungry, and didn't feel thirsty. That was
the whole round of human feelings, as far as I
knew, except the pain of being beaten.

"Well," said he, "you are going, George, to
a healthy farm-house to be purified. Keep in
the air there, as much as you can. Live an
out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away.
You had better not say much—in fact, you had
better be very careful not to say anything—about
what your parents died of, or they might not