ver been in his life before; for in his hand he held a clay pipe
which he made persistent efforts to smoke, while one of the men, a big
black-bearded animal who wore three coats, one on top of the other,
gently withdrew it from his lips each time that the smoke grew
dangerously thick. And the whole ten of them, sitting around him in
their rags and dirt, cheered him and petted him and praised him, even as
no polite assemblage had ever worshipped him before. No food, no drink
could have been so acceptable to that delicately nurtured child of the
house of Penrhyn as the rough admiration of those ten tramps. Whatever
terrors, sufferings, or privations he had been through were all
forgotten, and he crowed and shrieked with hysterical laughter. And when
his two rescuers dropped down into the hole, instead of welcoming them
with joy, he grabbed one of the collars of the big brute with the three
coats and wept in dire disappointment and affright.

"Fore God, boss!" said the spokesman of the gang, the sweat standing out
on his brow, "we didn't mean him no harm, and we wouldn't have done him
no harm neither. We found de little blokey over der in the ma'sh yonder,
and we tuk him in and fed him de best we could. We was goin' to take him
up to the man what keeps the gin-mill up the river there, for we hadn't
no knowledge where he come from, and we didn't want to get none of you
folks down on us. I know we oughter have took him up two hours ago, but
he was foolin' that funny-like that we all got kinder stuck on it, see,
and we kinder didn't want to shake him. That's all there was to it,
boss. God in heaven be my judge, I ain't lyin', and that's the truth!"

The faces of the ten tramps could not turn white, but they did show an
ashen fear under their eyes--a deadly fear of the two men for whom any
one of them would have been more than a match, but who represented the
world from which they were outcasts, the world of Home, of whose most
precious sweetness they had stolen an hour's enjoyment--the world so
strong and terrible to avenge a wrong to its best beloved.

[Illustration]

Then the silence was broken by the voice of the child, wailing
piteously:

"I don't want to be tooken away from the raggedty gentlemen!"

Dirck still looked suspicious as he took the weeping child, but Halford
smiled grimly, thoughtfully and sadly, as he put his hand in his pocket
and said: "I guess it's all right, boys, but I think you'd better get
away