ished to teach him a lesson.

True, the lesson sometimes went too far; and he thought with anxiety
of the Surry Hills affair, in which, through an accident, a
neighbouring push had disappeared like rats into a hole, branded with
murder. The ugly word hung on his tongue and paralysed his thoughts.
His mind recoiled with terror as he saw where his lawless ways had
carried him, feeling already branded with the mark of Cain, which the
instinct of the people has singled out as the unpardonable crime,
destroying the life that cannot be renewed. And suddenly he began to
persuade himself that the man's injuries were not serious, that he
would soon recover; for it was wonderful the knocking about a man could
stand.

He turned on himself with amazement. Why was he twittering like an old
woman? Quarrels, fights, and bloodshed were as familiar to him as his
daily bread. With a sudden cry of astonishment he remembered the baby.
The affair of the bricklayer had driven it completely out of his mind.
His thoughts returned to Cardigan Street. He remembered the quiet room
dimly lit with a candle, the dolorous cry of the infant, and the
intoxicating touch of its frail body in his arms.

His amazement increased. What had possessed him to take the brat in
his arms and nurse it? His lips contracted in a cynical grin as he
remembered the figure he cut when Chook appeared. He decided to look
on the affair as a joke. But again his thoughts returned to the child,
and he was surprised with a vibration of tenderness sweet as honey in
his veins. A strange yearning came over him like a physical weakness
for the touch of his son's body.

His eye caught his shadow on the wall, grotesque and forbidding; the
large head, bunched beneath the square shoulders, thrust outwards in a
hideous lump. Monster and outcast was he? Well, he would show them
that only an accident separated the hunchback from his fellows. He
thought with a fierce joy of his son's straight back and shapely limbs.
This was his child, that he could claim and exhibit to the world. Then
his delight changed to a vague terror--the fear of an animal that
dreads a trap, and finds itself caught. He blew out the candle and
fell asleep, to dream of enemies that fled and mocked at him,
embarrassed with an infant that hung like a millstone round his neck.

Within a month the affair of the bricklayer had blown over. The police
made inquiries, and arrested some of the Ivy Street