oy replied, waving his hand round.

"I mean, where do you sleep?"

The boy nodded, to intimate that his sleeping-place was included in
the general description of his domicile.

"And no one interferes with you?" George inquired.

"The beaks, they moves you on when they ketches you; but ef yer get
under a cart or in among the baskets you generally dodges 'em."

"And suppose you want to pay for a place to sleep, where do you go and
how much do you pay?"

"Tuppence," the boy said; "or if yer want a first-rate, fourpence.
Does yer want to find a crib?" he asked doubtfully, examining his
companion.

"Well, yes," George said. "I want to find some quiet place where I can
sleep, cheap, you know."

"Out of work?" the boy inquired.

"Yes. I haven't got anything to do at present. I am looking for a
place, you know."

"Don't know no one about?"

"No; I have just come in from Croydon."

The boy shook his head.

"Don't know nothing as would suit," he said. "Why, yer'd get them
clothes and any money yet had walked off with the wery fust night."

"I should not get a room to myself, I suppose, even for fourpence?"
George asked, making a rapid calculation that this would come to two
and fourpence per week, as much as his mother had paid for a
comparatively comfortable room in Croydon.

The boy opened his eyes in astonishment at his companion requiring a
room for himself.

"Lor' bless yer, yer'd have a score of them with yer!"

"I don't care about a bed," George said. "Just some place to sleep in.
Just some straw in any quiet corner."

This seemed more reasonable to the boy, and he thought the matter
over.

"Well," he said at last, "I knows of a place where they puts up the
hosses of the market carts. I knows a hostler there. Sometimes when
it's wery cold he lets me sleep up in the loft. Aint it warm and
comfortable just! I helps him with the hosses sometimes, and that's
why. I will ax him if yer likes."

George assented at once. His ideas as to the possibility of sleeping
in the open air had vanished when he saw the surroundings, and a bed
in a quiet loft seemed to him vastly better than sleeping in a room
with twenty others.

"How do you live?" he asked the lad, "and what's your name?"

"They calls me the Shadder," the boy said rather proudly; "but my real
name's Bill."

"Why do they call you the Shadow?" George asked.

"'Cause the bobbies finds it so hard to lay hands on me," Bill
replied.

"But what