lius looked
at her. "The brute who calls himself her father," the woman explained
impatiently.

Amelius turned, and saw Simple Sally with her arm in the grasp of a
half-drunken ruffian; one of the swarming wild beasts of Low London,
dirtied down from head to foot to the colour of the street mud--the
living danger and disgrace of English civilization. As Amelius eyed him,
he drew the girl away a step or two. "You've got a gentleman this time,"
he said to her; "I shall expect gold to-night, or else--!" He finished
the sentence by lifting his monstrous fist, and shaking it in her
face. Cautiously as he had lowered his tones in speaking, the words had
reached the keenly sensitive ears of Amelius. Urged by his hot temper,
he sprang forward. In another moment, he would have knocked the brute
down--but for the timely interference of the arm of the law, clad in a
policeman's great-coat. "Don't get yourself into trouble, sir," said the
man good-humouredly. "Now, you Hell-fire (that's the nice name they know
him by, sir, in these parts), be off with you!" The wild beast on two
legs cowered at the voice of authority, like the wild beast on four: he
was lost to sight, at the dark end of the street, in a moment.

"I saw him threaten her with his fist," said Amelius, his eyes still
aflame with indignation. "He has bruised her frightfully on the breast.
Is there no protection for the poor creature?"

"Well, sir," the policeman answered, "you can summon him if you like. I
dare say he'd get a month's hard labour. But, don't you see, it would be
all the worse for her when he came out of prison."

The policeman's view of the girl's position was beyond dispute. Amelius
turned to her gently; she was shivering with cold or terror, perhaps
with both. "Tell me," he said, "is that man really your father?"

"Lord bless you, sir!" interposed the policeman, astonished at the
gentleman's simplicity, "Simple Sally hasn't got father or mother--have
you, my girl?"

She paid no heed to the policeman. The sorrow and sympathy, plainly
visible in Amelius, filled her with a childish interest and surprise.
She dimly understood that it was sorrow and sympathy for _her._ The
bare idea of distressing this new friend, so unimaginably kind and
considerate, seemed to frighten her. "Don't fret about _me,_ sir," she
said timidly; "I don't mind having no father nor mother; I don't mind
being beaten." She appealed to the nearest of her two women-friends. "We
g