BLACK SHEEP!

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE ROD,"
&C. &C.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER VII. A DILEMMA.

SOUTH MOLTON-STREET had apparently a
strong attraction for Mr. James Swain. Perhaps
he found it a profitable and productive situation
in point of odd and early jobs, perhaps he had
some less professional reason for frequenting
it. However that may be, the fact existed that
no day passed without his tousled head and
imperfectly clad form making their appearance in
the street two or three times between dawn
and dark. He would hang about the precincts
of the house in which Routh and Harriet lodged,
and evinced an extraordinary preference for the
archway in the vicinity as a dining-room. He
might have been seen at irregular hours
devouring saveloys, polonies, or, when jobs odd
or even were not plentiful, hunches of bread
and cheese, within the shelter of the archway, in
the most unsophisticated attitudes, and with
great apparent enjoyment. Mr. James Swain's
face was not free from the underlying expression
of care and anxiety which is always to be found
by the careful observer in the countenance of
the London street-boy, but it had more than
the usual complement of sauciness, cunning,
readiness, and impudence.

The boy had quite an attraction for Mrs.
Routh, who would smile at him when she passed
him in the street, nod pleasantly to him
occasionally from her window, when his business or
pleasure led him to lounge past the house before
she had left her bedroom of a morning, and who
frequently sent him of errands, for the doing of
which she rewarded him with a liberality which
appeared to him astounding munificence. Mr.
James Swain was of a temperament to feel
kindness, neglected street-boy though he was,
and he had been wonderfully impressed by the
womanly compassion which had spoken to him
in Harriet's gentle tones on the morning of
their first meeting, and had looked out of all
the trouble and foreboding in her blue eyes.
His interest in the Routh household, however,
antedated that event, and received not only an
additional access, but a fresh colouring from it,
and an acute observer, supposing one to exist
for whom so mean a matter as the mental
condition of a street-boy, very vulgar indeed, and
without a particle of sentimental interest about
him, could possess any attraction, would have
discerned that a struggle of some sort was
going on in the mind of the frequenter of South
Molton-street, and seeker of odd jobs.

Routh, also, was not without interest for Jim
Swain. Perhaps he watched him even more
closely than he watched Harriet, but if he did,
it was with totally different feelings. Routh
had considerable powers of self-command, and
could always be civil and apparently good
tempered, no matter what his real humour
might be, when it accorded with his interests to
be so. But he was not a man to treat inferiors
with courtesy, or to refrain from rudeness and
brutality where they were safe, and unlikely to
do him any discredit. Consequently, servants
and other recipients of the outpourings of his
temper hated him with a vivid cordiality. Jim,
the street-boy, had been employed by him
occasionally, and had formed, apart from certain other
knowledge he had gained concerning Mr. Stewart
Routh, the worst opinion of that gentleman's
disposition and character.

"He's a bad 'un, anyhow," the boy muttered,
as he watched Mr. Routh letting himself into
the house he inhabited with his latch-key, having
previously taken a handful of letters from a
postman at the door. "An ill-lookin' dog, too.
Scowled at the letters as if he was a-goin' to eat
'em. P'raps they're love-letters. I shouldn't
wonder, now, as the lady is a pinin' for some 'un
else, and he's jealous, and gets hold on all the
letters to catch her out."

This bright idea, which Jim Swain derived
from his habitual reading of penny romances,
devoted to the delineation of the tender passion,
afforded him considerable gratification, and he
had already consumed several minutes and a
cold sausage while turning it over in his mind,
when Harriet Routh came out of the house,
and passed him, as he leaned against the wall
under the archway. She was very pale and
quite absorbed in thought, so that, though the
lad respectfully pulled a tuft of his tousled
hair in salutation, she did not perceive his
presence.

"She's not like the same woman," mused
Mr. James Swain; "she's gone as white as
anything; looks just as if she'd had to git her own
livin' for ever so long, and found it precious