th
aching feet to the Old Market, and lay down, holding Samuel tight, on a
pile of straw.

In a little while I awoke because Samuel was barking, and sitting up in
the straw I saw a dim shape huddled beside me, which I made out, after a
few startled blinks, to be the bent figure of a woman wrapped in a black
shawl with fringed ends, which were pulled over her head and knotted
under her chin. From the penetrating odour I had learned to associate
with my father, I judged that she had been lately drinking, and the
tumbled state of my coat convinced me that she had been frustrated by
Samuel in a base design to rifle my pockets. Yet she appeared so
miserable as she sat there rocking from side to side and crying to
herself, that I began all at once to feel very sorry. It seemed to hurt
her to cry and yet I saw that the more it hurt her the more she cried.

"If I were you," I suggested politely, "I'd go home right away."

"Home?" repeated the woman, with a hiccough, "what's home?"

"The place you live in."

"Lor, honey, I don't live in no place. I jest walks."

"But what do you do when you get tired?"

"I walks some mo'."

"An' don't you ever leave off?"

"Only when it's dark like this an' thar's no folks about."

"But what do folks say to you when they see you walkin'?"

"Say to me," she threw back her head and broke into a drunken laugh,
"why, they say to me: 'Step lively!'"

She crawled closer, peering at me greedily under the pale glimmer of the
street lamp.

"Why, you're a darlin' of a boy," she said, "an' such pretty blue eyes!"
Then she rose to her feet and stood swaying unsteadily above me, while
Samuel broke out into angry barks. "Shall I tell you a secret because of
yo' blue eyes?" she asked. "It's this--whatever you do in this world,
you step lively about it. I've done a heap of lookin' an' I've seen the
ones who get on are the ones who step the liveliest. It ain't no matter
where you're goin', it ain't no matter who's befo' you, if you want to
get there first, step lively!"

She went out, taking her awful secret with her, and turning over I fell
asleep again on my pile of straw. "If ever I have a dollar I'll give it
to her so she may stop walkin'," was my last conscious thought.

My next awakening was a very different one, for the light was streaming
into the market, and a cheerful red face was shining down, like a rising
sun, over a wheelbarrow of vegetables.

"Don't you think it's about time al