he watchman, is working
round from his half-tent, where he sleeps in the traffic, but cannot
possibly negotiate the full extent of trench and bridge for fifty
seconds more. Time cannot be lavished waiting for him. The man at the
reins, with seeming authority, clinches the matter.

"You stop, Peter Jackson. _Hospital!_ Don't you let the child out of
your hands before you get there. Understand?--All clear in front?" Two
men, who have taken the horses' heads, to soothe their shaken nerves
with slaps and suitable exclamations, now give them back to their
owners, leaving them free to rear high once or twice to relieve feeling;
while they themselves go back, each to his own place on the engine. A
word of remonstrance from the driver about that rearing, and they are
off again, the renewed fire-cry scarcely audible in the distance by the
time Old Sam gets across the wooden bridge.

To him, as to a responsible person, says Peter Jackson:--"Know where he
belongs?"--and to Mrs. Riley, as to one not responsible, but deserving
of sympathy:--"No--the wheels haven't been over him."

"Down yonder Court, I take it. Couldn't say for sartin." So says Sam;
and Mrs. Tapping discerns with pious fervour the Mercy of God in this
occurrence, He not having flattened the child out on the road outright.

But Peter Jackson's question implied no intention to communicate with
the little victim's family. To do so would be a clear dereliction of
duty; an offence against discipline. He has his instructions, and in
pursuance of them strides away to the Hospital without another word,
bearing in his arms a light burden so motionless that it is hard to
credit it with life. So quickly has the whole thing passed, that the
drift of idlers hard on his heels is a fraction of what a couple more
minutes would have made it. It will have grown before they reach the
Middlesex, short as the distance is. Then a police-sergeant, who joins
them half-way, will take notes and probably go to find the child's
parents; while Peter Jackson, chagrined at this hitch in his day's
fire-eating, will go off Walworth way at the best speed he may, after
handing over his charge to an indisputable House-Surgeon.

One can picture to oneself how the whole thing might pass as it did,
between the abrupt check of the engine's career, heard by Uncle Moses
and his friend, and the two or three minutes later when they emerged
through the archway to find Dolly in despair; not from any knowled