rstep that we occupied was the last. A yard beyond began the
black waste of mud. From the other end of the street, now growing dark,
he never took his staring eyes for an instant.

"Ever seen a stiff 'un--a dead 'un?"

"No."

"I 'ave--stuck a pin into 'im. 'E never felt it. Don't feel anything
when yer dead, do yer?"

All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms
and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with
quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in
bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.

"Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our bodies
are but senseless clay." I was glad I remembered that line. I tried to
think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it evaded me.

"I like you," he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in
the chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that
neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship
with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew him
for my first chum.

He wormed himself up.

"Yer won't tell?" he said.

I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I
should agree.

"Say 'I swear.'"

"I swear."

The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret
oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.

"Good-bye, cockey."

But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust it
into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his ran
off across the mud.

I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled
a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but
struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.

I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would
sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself
free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river,
he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating
feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over
him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud.
And after a time even that ceased.

It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and mother
were still out. I did not tell any one what I had seen, having sworn not
to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and less