m who stood nearest, the sovereign was
snatched, a screamed oath from the girl rent the thick air, and a
forlorn enough scarecrow of a young fellow sprang away.

The blood leaped in Antony Dart's veins again and he sprang after him in
a wholly normal passion of indignation. A thousand years ago--as it
seemed to him--he had been a good runner. This man was not one, and
want of food had weakened him. Dart went after him with strides which
astonished himself. Up the street, into an alley and out of it, a dozen
yards more and into a court, and the man wheeled with a hoarse, baffled
curse. The place had no outlet.

"Hell!" was all the creature said.

Dart took him by his greasy collar. Even the brief rush had left him
feeling like a living thing--which was a new sensation.

"Give it up," he ordered.

The thief looked at him with a half-laugh and obeyed, as if he felt the
uselessness of a struggle. He was not more than twenty-five years old,
and his eyes were cavernous with want. He had the face of a man who
might have belonged to a better class. When he had uttered the
exclamation invoking the infernal regions he had not dropped the
aspirate.

"I 'm as hungry as she is," he raved.

"Hungry enough to rob a child beggar?" said Dart.

"Hungry enough to rob a starving old woman--or a baby," with a defiant
snort. "Wolf hungry--tiger hungry--hungry enough to cut throats."

He whirled himself loose and leaned his body against the wall, turning
his face toward it. Suddenly he made a choking sound and began to sob.

"Hell!" he choked. "I'll give it up! I'll give it up!"

What a figure--what a figure, as he swung against the blackened wall,
his scarecrow clothes hanging on him, their once decent material making
their pinning together of buttonless places, their looseness and rents
showing dirty linen, more abject than any other squalor could have made
them. Antony Dart's blood, still running warm and well, was doing its
normal work among the brain-cells which had stirred so evilly through
the night. When he had seized the fellow by the collar, his hand had
left his pocket. He thrust it into another pocket and drew out some
silver.

"Go and get yourself some food," he said. "As much as you can eat. Then
go and wait for me at the place they call Apple Blossom Court. I don't
know where it is, but I am going there. I want to hear how you came to
this. Will you come?"

The thief lurched away from the wall an