r
a distressing discovery when they were admitted to the interior of the
dwelling. The first impression which the place produced on _my_ mind
suggested, on the contrary, that the boy's answers to my questions had
led me astray. It was simply impossible to associate Mrs. Van Brandt (as
_I_ remembered her) with the spectacle of such squalid poverty as I
now beheld. I rang the door-bell, feeling persuaded beforehand that my
inquiries would lead to no useful result.

As I lifted my hand to the bell, my little companion's dread of a
beating revived in full force. He hid himself behind me; and when I
asked what he was about, he answered, confidentially: "Please stand
between us, sir, when mother opens the door!"

A tall and truculent woman answered the bell. No introduction was
necessary. Holding a cane in her hand, she stood self-proclaimed as my
small friend's mother.

"I thought it was that vagabond of a boy of mine," she explained, as an
apology for the exhibition of the cane. "He has been gone on an errand
more than two hours. What did you please to want, sir?"

I interceded for the unfortunate boy before I entered on my own
business.

"I must beg you to forgive your son this time," I said. "I found him
lost in the streets; and I have brought him home."

The woman's astonishment when she heard what I had done, and discovered
her son behind me, literally struck her dumb. The language of the
eye, superseding on this occasion the language of the tongue, plainly
revealed the impression that I had produced on her: "You bring my lost
brat home in a cab! Mr. Stranger, you are mad."

"I hear that you have a lady named Brand lodging in the house," I went
on. "I dare say I am mistaken in supposing her to be a lady of the same
name whom I know. But I should like to make sure whether I am right or
wrong. Is it too late to disturb your lodger to-night?"

The woman recovered the use of her tongue.

"My lodger is up and waiting for that little fool, who doesn't know his
way about London yet!" She emphasized those words by shaking her brawny
fist at her son--who instantly returned to his place of refuge behind
the tail of my coat. "Have you got the money?" inquired the terrible
person, shouting at her hidden offspring over my shoulder. "Or have you
lost _that_ as well as your own stupid little self?"

The boy showed himself again, and put the money into his mother's knotty
hand. She counted it, with eyes which satisfied them