How?" asked Paul.

"I'd go through the whole of England, asking all the princes I met. You
don't meet 'em at every village pump, ye know," he added quickly, lest
the boy, detecting the bantering note, should freeze into reserve;
"but, if you keep yer eyes skinned and yer ears standing up, you can
learn where they are. Lor' lumme! I wouldn't be a little nigger slave
in a factory if I was the missin' heir. Not much. I wouldn't be starved
and beaten by Sam and Polly Button. Not me. D'ye think yer aforesaid
'igh-born parents are going to dive down into this stinkin' suburb of
hell to find yer out? Not likely. You've got to find 'em sonny. Yer can
find anybody on the 'ighroad if yer tramps long enough. What d'yer
think?"

"I'll find 'em," said Paul, in dizzy contemplation of possibilities.

"When are yer going to start?" asked Barney Bill.

Paul felt his wages jingle in his pocket. He was a capitalist. The
thrill of independence swept him from head to foot. What time like the
present? "I'll start now," said he.

It was night. Quite dark, save for the stars; the lights already
disappearing in the fringe of mean houses whose outline was merged
against the blackness of the town; the green and red and white disks
along the railway line behind the dim mass of the gasworks; the
occasional streak of conglomerate fireflies that was a tramcar; and the
red, remorseless glow of here and there a furnace that never was
extinct in the memory of man. And, save for the far shriek of trains,
the less remote and more frequent clanging of passing tramcars along
the road edged with the skeleton cottages, and, startlingly near, the
vain munching and dull footfall of the old horse, all was still.
Compared with home and Budge Street, it was the reposeful quiet of the
tomb. Barney Bill smoked for a time in silence, while Paul sat with
clenched fists and a beating heart. The simplicity of the high
adventure dazed him. All he had to do was to walk away--walk and walk,
free as a sparrow.

Presently Barney Bill slid from the footboard. "You stay here, sonny,
till I come back."

He limped away across the dim brickfield and sat down at the edge of
the hollow where the woman had been murdered. He had to think; to
decide a nice point of ethics. A vagrant seller of brooms and jute
mats, even though he does carry about with him "Cassell's Family
Reader" and "The Remains of Henry Kirke White," is distracted by few
psychological problems. Sufficient f