l-shaped and bending feebly in the breeze. This boy was
clutching my knee tightly with one filthy hand, while with the other he
pointed to the sky on which his eyes were intently fixed.

"'Look at that there rainbow!' he said. 'Look at that there rainbow!'

"I glanced up and saw that the clouds had partially broken and that
London lay under a huge and perfect coloured arch.

"'I never did!' continued the boy.

"He stared at me for an instant with the solemn expression of one who
reveals to the ignorant a miracle. Then he took his hand from my knee,
hurried to an adjoining seat, woke up a sleeping and partially
intoxicated tramp, requested him to observe closely the superb
proceedings of Nature, took no heed of his flooding oaths, and passed on
in the waving paper cap from seat to seat, rousing from their dreams,
and sorrows, and newspapers, the astounded habitues of the Square, that
they might share his awe and happiness. Before he had finished teaching
a heavy policeman the lessons of the sky, I knew that I had found my
wonder-child."

"You followed him?"

"I captured him in the midst of a group of emaciated little girls in the
shadow of Lord Nelson. All the childish crowd was looking upward, and
every eye was completely round over each widely-opened mouth, while
paper-cap repeated his formula. Poor children, looking at the sky! Ah,
Uniacke, what do you think of that for a sermon?"

The young clergyman cleared his throat. The red curtains by the narrow
window blew outward towards the fire, and sank in again, alternately
forcible and weak. The painter looked towards the window and a sadness
deepened in his eyes.

"Where is my wonder-child now?" he said.

"You have lost sight of him?"

"Yes--though the blood-money lies at my bank and the paper-cap is in my
studio."

"Is he not in London?"

"No, no; I learnt his history, the history of a gamin of fifteen or
thereabouts. It was much the same as a history of a London pavement,
with this exception, that the gamin had a mother to whom he presented me
without undue formality. The impression made upon me by that lady at
first was unfavourable, since she was slatternly, drank, and was
apparently given to cuffing and kicking the boy--her only child. I
considered her an abandoned and unfeeling female. She dwelt in Drury
Lane and sold something that most of us have never heard of."

"I can see her."

"I wish to heaven I could not," the painter said, with a sudden