if they could find some of it to
do to keep themselves from going hungry. The brick fronts of the
houses were blackened with smoke, their windows were nearly all dirty
and hung with dingy curtains, or had no curtains at all; the strips of
ground, which had once been intended to grow flowers in, had been
trodden down into bare earth in which even weeds had forgotten to grow.
One of them was used as a stone-cutter's yard, and cheap monuments,
crosses, and slates were set out for sale, bearing inscriptions
beginning with "Sacred to the Memory of." Another had piles of old
lumber in it, another exhibited second-hand furniture, chairs with
unsteady legs, sofas with horsehair stuffing bulging out of holes in
their covering, mirrors with blotches or cracks in them. The insides
of the houses were as gloomy as the outside. They were all exactly
alike. In each a dark entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up
to bedrooms, and to narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen. The
back bedroom looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats
quarreled, or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime
they might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road,
and through their windows came the roar and rattle of it. It was
shabby and cheerless on the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy ones
it was the most forlorn place in London.

At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No. 7.

He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco Loristan, and
he was the kind of boy people look at a second time when they have
looked at him once. In the first place, he was a very big boy--tall
for his years, and with a particularly strong frame. His shoulders were
broad and his arms and legs were long and powerful. He was quite used
to hearing people say, as they glanced at him, "What a fine, big lad!"
And then they always looked again at his face. It was not an English
face or an American one, and was very dark in coloring. His features
were strong, his black hair grew on his head like a mat, his eyes were
large and deep set, and looked out between thick, straight, black
lashes. He was as un-English a boy as one could imagine, and an
observing person would have been struck