ion, holding out a very dirty
hand dramatically in front of him. "You comes, as it might be, to me
and you says, `I want a sitivation.' Then I says, `Where's yer
carikter?' Then you says, `I 'ain't got one.' Then I says, `Out yer
go.'"

Having thus placed the situation in a nutshell, as it were, he put his
hands in his pockets and observed Frank covertly out of the corners of
his eyes. Seeing how crestfallen he looked, the tramp presently spoke
again.

"Now, in my line of bizness it's not so important a carikter isn't. I
might very likely look over it in takin' a pal if he asked me. In
course it would be a favour; but still I might look over it."

"Do you want a pal?" asked Frank, pushed to extremity.

"Well, I don't, not to say _want_ a pal," replied the tramp, "but I
don't mind stretching a pint in your case if you like to jine."

The blue eyes and the glittering black ones met for an instant.

"I'll jine yer," said Frank with a sigh.

The tramp held out his long-fingered brown hand.

"Shake hands," he said. "The terms is, halves all we git."

The bargain concluded, he informed Frank that his name was Barney, and
further introduced him to the mice, called respectively Jumbo, Alice,
and Lord Beaconsfield.

This last, a mouse of weak-eyed and feeble appearance, he took out of
the cage and allowed to crawl over him, stroking it tenderly now and
then with the tip of his finger.

"He's an artful one, he is," he murmured admiringly. "I calls him Dizzy
for short. What's your name, little un?"

"Frank."

"That sounds a good sort o' name too," said Barney; "sort o' name you
see in gowld letters on a chany mug in the shop winders, don't it? I
don't fancy, though, I could bring my tongue to it, not as a _jineral_
thing. I shall call yer `Nipper,' if you don't mind. After a friend o'
mine."

The new name appearing rather an advantage than otherwise under his
present circumstances Frank agreed to drop his own, and to be henceforth
known only as the "Nipper." This change seemed to have broken the last
link which bound him to Green Highlands and his own people. He was
Frank Darvell no longer; he belonged to no one; the wide world was his
home; Barney and the white mice his only friends and companions.

CHAPTER THREE.

In the wandering life that followed, Frank had excellent opportunities
for studying the character of his new comrade, and it did not take long
to discover two prominent points in