t numerous or strong enough to
withstand him, commits some outrage that excites popular indignation and
leads to the utter abolition of one of the few poor out-door homes that
the tramp can call his own, by the grace and indulgence of the world of
workers. That such a thing had happened now the two searchers for the
lost child feared with an unspeakable fear.

Dirck straightened himself up after a careful inspection of the strip of
salt grass turf, and looking up at the ridge, blew a loud, shrill
whistle on his two fingers. There was no answer. They had gone a full
mile beyond call of their followers.

"I'll tell you what, old man," said Dirck, with the light of battle
coming into his young eyes, "we'll do this thing ourselves." His senior
smiled, but even as he smiled he knit his brows.

"I'll go you, my boy," he said, "so far as to look them up at the
canal-boats. If they are not there we've got to go back and start the
rest off. It may be a question of horses, and it may be a question of
telegraphing."

"Well, let's have one go at them, anyway," said Dirck. He was no less
tender-hearted than his companion; he wanted to find the child, but also
he wanted, being young and strong and full of fight, to hunt tramps.

* * * * *

There were three tramp-holes by the riverside, but two were sheltered
hollows used only in the winter-time. The third was a collection of
abandoned canal-boats on the muddy strand of the river. Most of them
were hopeless wrecks; in three or four a few patches of deck remained,
enough to afford lodgment and shelter to the reckless wayfarers who made
nothing of sleeping close to the polluted waters that permeated the
rotten hulks with foul stains and fouler smells.

From the largest of these long, clumsy carcasses of boats came a sound
of muffled laughter. The two searchers crept softly up, climbed
noiselessly to the deck and looked down the hatchway. The low, red sun
poured in through a window below them, leaving them in shadow and making
a picture in red light and black shades of the strange group below.

Surrounded by ten tramps; ten dirty, uncouth, unshaven men of the road,
sat the little Penrhyn boy, his little night-shirt much travel-stained
and torn, his fat legs scratched and bruised, his soiled cheeks showing
the traces of tears, his lips dyed with the juices of the berries he
had eaten on his way, but happy, happy, happy--happier perhaps than he
had e