name of the
street, and it was Nightingale Street, and the stairs where we had left
the others was Bullamy's Causeway, because we have the true explorer's
instincts, and when you can't blaze your way on trees with your axe, or
lay crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to remember the names
of streets.

So we said goodbye, and went on through the grey-brown streets with
hardly any shops, and those only very small and common, and we got to
the alley all right. It was a narrow place between high blank brown-grey
walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks and tanneries. There was
hardly any one there, but when we got into it we heard feet running
ahead of us, and Oswald said--

"Hullo, suppose that's some one with Pincher, and they've recognized his
long-lost masters and they're making a bolt for it?"

And we all started running as hard as ever we could. There was a turn in
the passage, and when we got round it we saw that the running was
stopping. There were four or five boys in a little crowd round some one
in blue--blue looked such a change after the muddy colour of everything
in that dead Eastern domain--and when we got up, the person the blue was
on was a very wrinkled old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft
felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I see that I ought not to
conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what
we had been looking for. It was indeed a Celestial Chinaman in deep
difficulties with these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards, truly
fiends in mortal shape. They were laughing at the old Chinaman, and
shouting to each other, and their language was of that kind that I was
sorry we had got Alice with us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she
was so angry she did not know what they were saying.

"Pull his bloomin' pigtail," said one of these outcasts from decent
conduct.

The old man was trying to keep them off with both hands, but the hands
were very wrinkled and trembly.

Oswald is grateful to his good Father who taught him and Dicky the
proper way to put their hands up. If it had not been for that, Oswald
does not know what on earth would have happened, for the outcasts were
five to our two, because no one could have expected Alice to do what
she did.

[Illustration: IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.]

Before Oswald had even got his hands into the position required by the
noble art of self-defence, she had slapped the large