along on one leg, and smiling, and waving his arms,
and causing the ample folds and sleeves of his smock to flutter until
he seemed to be moving in the midst of a nimbus, Nilushka would sing in
a halting whisper the childish ditty:

Oh Lo-ord, pardon me!
Wo-olves run,
And do-ogs run,
And the hunters wait
To kill the wolves.
Oh Lo-ord, pardon me!

Meanwhile, he would diffuse a cheering atmosphere of happiness with
which no one in the locality had anything in common. For he was ever a
lighthearted, winning, essentially pure innocent of the type which
never fails to evoke good-natured smiles and kindly emotions. Indeed,
as he roamed the streets, the suburb seemed to live its life with less
clamour, to appear more decent of outward guise, since the local folk
looked upon the imbecile with far more indulgence than they did upon
their own children; and he was intimate with, and beloved by, even the
worst. Probably the reason for this was that the semblance of flight
amid an atmosphere of golden dust which was his combined with his
straight, slender little figure to put all who beheld him in mind of
churches, angels, God, and Paradise. At all events, all viewed him in a
manner contemplative, interested, and more than a little deferential.

A curious fact was the circumstance that whenever Nilushka sighted a
stray gleam from a piece of glass, or the glitter of a morsel of copper
in sunlight, he would halt dead where he was, turn grey with the
ashiness of death, lose his smile, and remain dilating to an unnatural
extent his clouded and troubled eyes. And so, with his whole form
distorted with horror, and his thin hand crossing himself, and his
knees trembling, and his smock fluttering around his frail wisp of a
body, and his features growing stonelike, he would, for an hour or
more, continue to stand, until at length someone laid a hand in his,
and led him home.

The tale had it that, in the first instance, born "soft-headed," he
finally lost his reason, five years before the period of which I am
writing, when a great fire occurred, and that thenceforth anything,
save sunlight, that in any way resembled fire plunged him into this
torpor of dumb dread. Naturally the people of the suburb devoted to him
a great deal of attention.

"There goes God's fool," would be their remark. "It will not be long
before he dies and becomes a Saint, and we fall down and worship him."

Yet there were persons who would go so f