looking people about, and throngs of children playing over
the foul pavement and in the road.

My boy seemed quite at home there and as if he belonged to the place. I
noticed that as I ran after him, wondering whether it would be of any
use to call to them to stop him, though if I had determined that it
would be I had not the breath, as I panted on at a much slower rate now,
and with the perspiration streaming down my face.

I kept losing sight of him, there were so many people grouped about the
pavement along which he ran, while I kept to the road, but he went in
and out among them as easily as a dog might have run, till all at once I
saw him dive in amongst a number of men talking at the entrance of a
narrow archway with a public-house on one side, and as I ran up I found
that it was a court, down which I caught a glimpse of the boy with the
rope still over his arm.

I stopped for nothing but dashed in after him, the men giving way at
first, but as I blundered in my haste against one rough-looking fellow,
he roared out savagely:

"Now, then, where are you running to?" and made a snatch at my collar.

I eluded him by making quite a bound in my alarm, and nearly falling
over the leg of another, who thrust it out to trip me up. I escaped a
fall, however, and entered the court, which seemed to be half full of
children, just in time to see my boy slip into a house nearly at the
bottom, on the left.

He stopped for a moment to look back to see if I was coming, and then he
disappeared, and my heart gave a bound, for in my excitement I felt that
I had succeeded, and that I had traced the young thief to his lair.

I did not think about anything else, only that the children all stopped
their games and set up a kind of yell, while it seemed to me that the
men who were at the entrance of the court were all following me slowly
with their hands thrust down low in their pockets, and it struck me for
the moment that they were all coming down to see the capture of the
thief.

I was in happy ignorance just then that I had followed the boy into one
of the vilest and most dangerous parts of London in those days,--to wit
a Drury Lane court, one of the refuges of some of the worst characters
in that district.

In this ignorance I was still observant, and noticed that the doors on
each side of the dirty court stood wide open, while the yell set up by
the children brought people to some of the open windows.

That was all seen i