irs. It bore the marks of Baby's
teeth; and, as I looked along the hall, I saw too plainly that the usual
array of freshly-blackened boots and shoes before the lodgers' doors
was not there. As I ascended the stairs, I found another, but with the
blacking carefully licked off. On the third floor were two or three more
boots, slightly mouthed; but at this point Baby's taste for blacking had
evidently palled. A little farther on was a ladder, leading to an open
scuttle. I mounted the ladder, and reached the flat roof, that formed
a continuous level over the row of houses to the corner of the street.
Behind the chimney on the very last roof, something was lurking. It was
the fugitive Baby. He was covered with dust and dirt and fragments of
glass. But he was sitting on his hind-legs, and was eating an enormous
slab of peanut candy, with a look of mingled guilt and infinite
satisfaction. He even, I fancied, slightly stroked his stomach with his
disengaged fore-paw as I approached. He knew that I was looking for
him; and the expression of his eye said plainly, "The past, at least, is
secure."

I hurried him, with the evidences of his guilt, back to the scuttle, and
descended on tiptoe to the floor beneath. Providence favored us: I met
no one on the stairs; and his own cushioned tread was inaudible. I think
he was conscious of the dangers of detection; for he even forebore
to breathe, or much less chew the last mouthful he had taken; and he
skulked at my side with the sirup dropping from his motionless jaws. I
think he would have silently choked to death just then, for my sake; and
it was not until I had reached my room again, and threw myself panting
on the sofa, that I saw how near strangulation he had been. He gulped
once or twice apologetically, and then walked to the corner of his
own accord, and rolled himself up like an immense sugarplum, sweating
remorse and treacle at every pore.

I locked him in when I went to breakfast, when I found Mrs. Brown's
lodgers in a state of intense excitement over certain mysterious events
of the night before, and the dreadful revelations of the morning. It
appeared that burglars had entered the block from the scuttles; that,
being suddenly alarmed, they had quitted our house without committing
any depredation, dropping even the boots they had collected in the
halls; but that a desperate attempt had been made to force the till in
the confectioner's shop on the corner, and that the glass sh