it
was stealing."

The scar on Aymer's forehead was very visible. He took up a
paper-knife and ran his fingers along the edge slowly.

"Well?"

The boy looked round, suddenly aware of where he was, of the beauty
and comfort around him, of Caesar's personality, and the incongruity of
his admission. However, so it was: facts were facts: it was imperative
he should know his own position, even if it was an unpleasing subject.
So he went on hastily. "Oh, well, one day he took me out with him for
a walk. We went into a big sort of shop with lots of people buying
things and he knocked up 'accidental like' (this was evidently a
reminiscence of a phrase often used), against a lady and she dropped
her parcels and purse and things, and I pretended to pick them up, and
if there were only parcels or pennies I really did, but if the money
spilt and it was gold I put my foot on it and picked it up for Marley
when I could. We made a lot that way. Of course mother didn't know,"
he added hurriedly, "or Martha. Then one day there was a row and
Marley was caught, and I ran away. You see I was pretty small, and
could slip in anywhere. I got back and told Martha, and she cried and
told mother, and said as how I should be sure to be took too. So we
went away from London that night. I don't know what happened to
Martha, but mother said I mustn't go back to London or I'd be taken
too."

The grim tragedy of it all, the miserable fate from which the woman
had fought so hard to save her child, and the same child's dim
appreciation of it struck Aymer with the sharpness of physical pain.

"Marley told me it was only keeping what one found, but mother said it
was just stealing, and that Marley was bad. He was good to me anyhow.
Martha--Mrs. Sartin--you know--used often to cry about Marley's ways.
_She_ was always very respectable; her father kept a linen-draper's
shop, and she meant to put Sam into a shop. Sam didn't like his
father. I saw Sam go by to-day--he's bigger, but it was him and he
knew me--and I asked about the being taken up because I thought it
wouldn't be safe for me to go about perhaps."

So level and even was his voice that Aymer did not guess the agony of
apprehension and fear the boy was holding back behind his almost
abnormal self-control, but he did his best to reassure him.

"They would not know you, Christopher, and if they did they would not
take you away from me. You were a very little boy then. I could let
them kno