yea, twice seventy years of mortal
agony and suffering could hardly leave a deeper impress. He is
strangely clad. He is in rags. The remnants of fine clothes are
dropping from his shrunken body. His hand is white and small. Upon
the largest finger he wears a ring--once, no doubt, before his hand
had shrivelled up--the property and ornament of the smallest. It is
a sparkling diamond, and it glistens as his own black eye should, if
it be true that he is old only in mental misery and pain. There is
no sign of thought or feeling in his look. His eye falls on no one,
but seems to pass beyond the lookers-on, and to rest on space. The
company are far more agitated. A few minutes before my arrival the
strange object had been found, with the boy whom I had first seen,
wandering in the garden. He was apprehended for a thief, brought
into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it
been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot. Commiseration
then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire
to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business
was. He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had
been unsatisfactory and vague. When I entered the room, the doctor
gave me a slight recognition, and proceeded at once to a further
examination of the stripling.

"Where did you pick him up, Sir?" enquired the Doctor.

"Mother sent me out a-begging with him," answered the gypsy boy.

"Who is your mother?"

"Mabel."

"Mabel what?"

"Mabel nothing."

"Where does she live, then?"

"She doesn't live nowhere. She's a tramper."

"Where is she now?"

"How can I tell? We shall pick up somewhere. Let me go, and take
Silly Billy with me. I shall get such a licking if I don't."

"Is his name Billy?"

"No, Silly Billy, all then chaps as is fools are called Silly Billy.
You know that, don't you? Oh, I say, do let's go now, there's good
fellows!"

"Wait a moment, boy--not so fast. How long have you been acquainted
with this unfortunate?"

"What, Silly Billy? Oh, we ain't very old friends! I only see'd him
yesterday. He came up quite unawares to our camp whilst we were
grubbing. He seemed very hungry, so mother gave him summut, and made
him up a bed--and she means to have him. So she sent me out this
morning a-begging with him, and told me she'd break every gallows
bone I'd got, if I did not bring him back safe. I say, now I have
told all, let us go--there's a good