“Half-killed me,” said Paul.

Barney Bill twisted his head on one side and looked at him out of his twinkling eyes.  Paul thought he resembled a grotesque bird.

“Wot did yer do it for?” he asked.

“This,” said Paul, holding out a grubby palm in which lay the precious cornelian heart.

His friend blinked at it.  “Wot the blazes is the good of that?”

“It’s a talisman,” replied Paul, who, having come across the word in a book, had at once applied it to his treasure.

“Lor’ lumme!” cried Barney Bill.  “And it was for that bit of stuff yer ran the risk of being flayed alive by yer loving parents?”

Paul was quick to detect a note of admiration underlying the superficial contemptuousness of the words.  “I’d ha’ gone through fire and water for it,” he declared theatrically.

“Lor’ lumme!” said Barney Bill again.

“I got summat else,” said Paul, taking from his pocket his little pack of Sunday-school cards.

Barney Bill examined them gravely.  “I think you’d better do away with these.”

“Why?”

“They establishes yer identity,” said Barney Bill.

“What’s that?”

Barney Bill explained.  Paul was running away from home.  The police, informed of the fact, would raise a hue-and-cry.  The cards, if found, would be evidence.  Paul laughed.  The constabulary was not popular in Budge Street.

“Mother ain’t going to ha’ nowt to do with the police, nor father, either.”

He hinted that the cards might be useful later.  His childish vanity loved the trivial encomiums inscribed thereon.  They would impress beholders who had not the same reasons for preoccupation as Barney Bill.

“You’re thinking of your ’igh-born parents,” said Barney Bill.  “All right, keep ’em.  Only hide ’ern away safe.  And now get in and let us clear out of this place.  It smelts like a cheese with an escape of gas running through it.  And you’d better stay inside and not show your face all day long.  I don’t want to be had up for kidnapping.”

Paul jumped in.  Barney Bill clambered onto the footboard and took the reins.  The old horse started and the van jolted its way to the road, on which as yet no tramcars clattered.  As the van turned, Paul, craning his neck out of the window, obtained the last glimpse of Bludston.  He had no regrets.  As far as such a thought could be formulated in his young mind, he wished that the place could be blotted out from his memory, as it was now hidden forever from his vision.  He stood at the little window, facing south, gazing toward the unknown region at the end of which lay London, city of dreams.  He was not quite fourteen.  His destiny was before him, and to the fulfilment thereof he saw no hindrance.  No more would the remorseless factory hook catch him from his sleep and swing him into the relentless machine.  Never again, would he hear his mother’s shrewish