the noisy crowd of Skinner's
Hole residents gathered around the stalls and shooting-galleries. One
of the stalls stood a little away from the rest, and instead of a huge
naphtha flare, was only lighted by a couple of candles set in battered
old stable-lanterns. The owner of the stall was a queer little bent
old man wearing an immensely tall top-hat and a very threadbare suit of
black. The collar of his coat was turned up and tied round his neck
with a red handkerchief, and the ends of the handkerchief mingled with
a flowing grey beard. He was a well-known character of Skinner's Hole,
and the boys called him Hoppity Jack, because one of his legs was
shorter than the other, so that his head bobbed up and down as he
walked.

He kept a small herbalist's shop, and stored it with simples which he
rambled far and wide over heath and upland to gather, and dry, and tie
up in bunches. On Sundays he betook himself to the public park of
Bardon, carrying a small stand. From this stand he delivered long
lectures, whenever he could gather an audience, on the subject of the
ten lost tribes of Israel. Altogether, he was one of those curious
characters whom one finds at times in the byways of life. His many
oddities marked him out very distinctly from other people, and often
made him a butt for the rude jokes and horseplay of idle loungers on
Quay Flat.

His stall was always to be found near the rest, and it was never
stocked but with one thing--a kind of toffee with horehound in it. He
made it himself, and vended it as a certain cure for coughs and colds.

As Chippy and his companion came up, Hoppity Jack was screaming with
rage, and the crowd of idle boys tormenting him was convulsed with
laughter. A long-armed wharf-rat had flung a piece of dried mud and
sent the old man's queer tall hat spinning from his head.

The thrower was laughing loudly with the rest, when a sound fell on his
ear. 'Kar-kaw! Kar-kaw!' He whipped round, for he was a member of
the Raven Patrol, and saw his leader a dozen yards away, and ran up at
once.

'Wot d'yer want, Chippy?' he cried.

'Come out o' that,' commanded Chippy--'come out an' stop out. Wot sort
o' game is that un for a scout?'

'On'y a bit of a lark wi' old Hoppity Jack,' said the surprised Raven.
'Why, yer've bin in it yerself many a time, Chippy.'

The patrol-leader went rather red. No one likes to be reminded of the
days when he was unregenerate. But he spoke firmly.