ke me along I promise to give you all
what I earns or gets anyhow, and be a good boy, and do what you say. And
I shall be very glad if you will. Your obedient servant----' What's your
name, eh?"

"Dickie Harding."

"Get it wrote down, then. Done? I'm glad I wasn't born a table to be
wrote on. Don't it make yer legs stiff, neither!"

He rolled over, took the paper and read it slowly and with difficulty.
Then he folded it and put it in his pocket.

"Now we're square," he said. "That'll stand true and legal in any
police-court in England, that will. And don't you forget it."

To the people who live in Rosemary Terrace the words "police-court" are
very alarming indeed. Dickie turned a little paler and said, "Why
police? I ain't done nothing wrong writin' what you telled me?"

"No, my boy," said the man, "you ain't done no wrong; you done right.
But there's bad people in the world--police and such--as might lay it up
to me as I took you away against your will. They could put a man away
for less than that."

"But it ain't agin my will," said Dickie; "I want to!"

"That's what _I_ say," said the man cheerfully. "So now we're agreed
upon it, if you'll step it we'll see about a doss for to-night; and
to-morrow we'll sleep in the bed with the green curtains."

"I see that there in a book," said Dickie, charmed. "He Reward the Wake,
the last of the English, and I wunnered what it stood for."

"It stands for laying out," said the man (and so it does, though that's
not at all what the author of "Hereward" meant it to mean)--"laying out
under a 'edge or a 'aystack or such and lookin' up at the stars till you
goes by-by. An' jolly good business, too, fine weather. An' then you
'oofs it a bit and resties a bit, and some one gives you something to
'elp you along the road, and in the evening you 'as a glass of ale at
the Publy Kows, and finds another set o' green bed curtains. An' on
Saturday you gets in a extra lot of prog, and a Sunday you stays where
you be and washes of your shirt."

"Do you have adventures?" asked Dick, recognizing in this description a
rough sketch of the life of a modern knight-errant.

"'Ventures? I believe you!" said the man. "Why, only last month a brute
of a dog bit me in the leg, at a back door Sutton way. An' once I see a
elephant."

"Wild?" asked Dickie, thrilling.

"Not azackly wild--with a circus 'e was. But big! Wild ones ain't 'alf
the size, I lay! And you meets soldiers, and parties in