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Updated: June 15, 2025
The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake. He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. He stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened a door. A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face. "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?"
This was the would-be thief's chance. With a dexterity worthy of a better cause the urchin transferred the slip, money and letters to his own pocket. It was done in less than three seconds, and then he darted back into the crowd upon the street. Of course Richard found no bug, and he was considerably perplexed by the urchin's actions, never dreaming of what had really occurred.
Fish supplanted marbles as objects of prime importance in the urchin's mind. The smallest fishing village would have two or three boats out on the banks, and the larger town several hundred.
Being boxed in with a board, this was not an easy matter, but the urchin's limbs were powerful, and he finally got over the obstruction, sufficiently far to lose his balance, and fall with a sounding flop on the floor. It is interesting to notice how soon deceit creeps into the hearts of some children!
I saw an urchin of nine brandishing with pride More's "Utopia" and Wells's "New Machiavelli," which he compared with a rival urchin's a girl's bunch of newspapers on "Poultry" and "Wireless," and solemnly exchanging their treasures.
Among other things, he not only began an intelligent inquiry about the locks of a rifle, but a practical inquiry with his fingers, which called for remonstrance. "Do you know, Junkie, that this is the very spot where your Cousin Milly fell?" said Barret, by way of directing the urchin's thoughts into a safer channel. "Is it? Oh, dear, what a thump she must have come down!"
"Lor', sir," the boy said, not without a certain pride, "I knows a corpse when I sees it. My father died come a fortnight ago. See that?" And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm. "Well, father looked just like the gentleman." Julian was petrified by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck him as utterly vicious and terrible.
He was evidently the pride of the ruffian father, who took all imaginable care of this chick of the gallows, would dandle him on his knee, and would occasionally take the cigar from his own moustached lips and insert it in the urchin's mouth.
As the sound of their feet died away in the depths of the tower, Villon turned to the king. "If the Duke of Burgundy falls into my trap," he said; "men will call me a great captain. Yet it is no more than remembering the shape of a meadow where I played in childhood. Strange that an urchin's playground should become a Golgotha of graves and glories."
I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund man leant quickly back into his corner. Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its victim's ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was, as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.
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