his thing, this child?" he asks.

"Deputy," says Durdles, with a nod.

"Is that its--his--name?"

"Deputy," assents Durdles, whereupon the small boy feels called upon to
speak for himself.

"I'm man-servant up at the Travellers Twopenny in Gas Works Garding," he
explains. "All us man-servants at Travellers Lodgings is named Deputy, but
I never pleads to no name, mind yer. When they says to me in the Lockup,
'What's your name?' I says to 'em 'find out.' Likewise when they says,
'What's your religion?' I says, 'find out'!" After delivering himself of
this speech, he withdraws into the road and taking aim, he resumes:----

_Widdy widdy wen!
I--ket--ches--'im--out--ar--ter--_

"Hold your hand!" cries Jasper, "and don't throw while I stand so near
him, or I'll kill you! Come Durdles, let me walk home with you to-night.
Shall I carry your bundle?"

"Not on any account," replies Durdles, adjusting it, and continuing to
talk in a rambling way, as he and Jasper walk on together.

"This creature, Deputy, is behind us," says Jasper, looking back. "Is he
to follow us?"

The relations between Durdles and Deputy seem to be of a capricious kind,
for on Durdles turning to look at the boy, Deputy makes a wide circuit
into the road and stands on the defensive.

"You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun tonight," cries Durdles,
unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining an injury.

"Yer lie; I did," says Deputy, in his only polite form of contradiction,
whereupon Durdles turns back again and forgets the offence as unexpectedly
as he had recalled it, and says to Jasper, in reference to Deputy.

"Own brother, sir, to Peter, the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in
life."

"At which he takes aim?" Mr. Jasper suggests.

"That is it, sir," returns Durdles; "at which he takes aim. I took him in
hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A destroyer. What work
did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he earn by it? Short terms in
Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not
a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but that
he stoned for want of an enlightened object. I put that enlightened object
before him, and now he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three pennorth
a week."

"I wonder he has no competitors."

"He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 'em all away."

"He still keeps behind us," repeats Jasper, looking back, "is he to follow
us?"