r, he put
the horse into the shafts. Barney Bill was a man of his word. He was
not going to wait for Paul; but lie cast a glance round the limited
horizon of the brickfield, hoping, against reason, to see the little
slim figure emerge from some opening and run toward him.

"Darn the boy!" said Barney Bill, taking off his cap and scratching his
wet head.

A low moan broke the dead silence of the Sunday dawn. He started and
looked about him. He listened. There was another. The moans were those
of a sleeper. He bent down and looked under the van. There Jay Paul,
huddled up, fast asleep on the bare ground.

"Well, I'm jiggered! I'm just jiggered. Here, you--hello!" cried Barney
Bill.

Paul awakened suddenly, half sat up, grinned, grabbed at something on
the ground beside him and wriggled out between the wheels.

"How long you been there?"

"About two hours," said Paul.

"Why didn't yer wake me?"

"I didn't like to disturb thee," said Paul.

"Did yer go home?"

"Ay," said Paul.

"Into the house?"

Paul nodded and smiled. Now, that it was all over, he could smile. But
only afterwards, when he had greater command of language, could he
describe the awful terror that shook his soul when he opened the front
door, crept twice through the darkness of the sleeping kitchen and
noiselessly closed the door again.

For many months he felt the terror of his dreams. Briefly he told
Barney Bill of his exploit. How he had to lurk in the shadow of the
street during the end of a battle between the Buttons, in which the
lodgers and a policeman had intervened. How he had to
wait--interminable hours--until the house was quiet. How he had
stumbled over things in the drunken disorder of the kitchen floor,
dreading to arouse the four elder little Buttons who slept in the room.
How narrowly he had missed running into the arms of the policeman who
had passed the door some seconds before he opened it. How he had
crouched on the pavement until the policeman turned the corner, and how
he had fled in the opposite direction.

"And if yer mother had caught ye, what would she have done to yer?"

"Half-killed me," said Paul.

Barney Bill twisted his head on one side and looked at him out of his
twinkling eyes. Paul thought he resembled a grotesque bird.

"Wot did yer do it for?" he asked.

"This," said Paul, holding out a grubby palm in which lay the precious
cornelian heart.

His friend blinked at it. "Wot the blazes is the good o