realised what I was running towards.

"Then I became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the
street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red
shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a
crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I
could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther
from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up
the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood
there until the crowd should have passed. Happily the dog stopped
at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and turned tail, running
back to Bloomsbury Square again.

"On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about
'When shall we see His face?' and it seemed an interminable time
to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me.
Thud, thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for
the moment I did not notice two urchins stopping at the railings by
me. 'See 'em,' said one. 'See what?' said the other. 'Why--them
footmarks--bare. Like what you makes in mud.'

"I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping
at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened
steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their
confounded intelligence was arrested. 'Thud, thud, thud, when,
thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.' 'There's a
barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don't know nothing,' said
one. 'And he ain't never come down again. And his foot was
a-bleeding.'

"The thick of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,'
quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise
in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and
saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in
splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed.

"'Why, that's rum,' said the elder. 'Dashed rum! It's just like
the ghost of a foot, ain't it?' He hesitated and advanced with
outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was
catching, and then a girl. In another moment he would have touched
me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step, the boy started back with
an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into
the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed
enough to follow the movement, and before I was well down the
steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary
astonish