that now, Mr. Thompson. This boy's delicate, and as I say, he's already been knocked about so crool, he's frit of his own shadow." 

 Mr. Thompson promised with becoming solemnity that he would see no harm came to the boy. Thereupon he seemed to go up a little in Mother's estimation. Moreover, he suddenly took an odd fancy to Johnnie. He produced a foreign penny from his pea-jacket, offered it to Johnnie and asked him what he thought of it, and he seemed so gratified that Johnnie—who had about as much imagination as the leg of a chair—was not in the least afraid of him, that he told Johnnie to keep the penny, and then he fairly took away the breath of everybody, Mother included, by promising magnificently to bring Johnnie a parrot from the West Indies. 

 Even Mr. Elijah Hendren was impressed by this princely offer on the part of his kinsman by marriage. 

 "He's rough, o' course," whispered Mr. Elijah Hendren to the Foreman Shunter, "but he means it about the parrot. That's the kind o' man he is, although, mind you, I don't say he's polished." 

 Whatever doubts might have been entertained for the future of Henry Harper, the parrot somehow seemed to soften them. Even Mother felt that to express misgiving after that would be in bad taste. Mr. Thompson promised that he would see the old man in the course of the morrow, as the Margaret Carey had to sail on Friday, but he had no doubt it would be all right as they never minded a boy or two. And then the Foreman Shunter sent Johnnie to the end of the street for a quartern of rum, as there was only beer in the house, and that mild beverage was not the slightest use to a sailor. 

 Johnnie walked on air. At every shop window he came to he stopped to examine his foreign penny. But what was that in comparison with a real live parrot all the way from the West Indies? That night, Johnnie was the happiest boy in Kentish Town. He slept with the foreign penny under his pillow, and his dreams were of unparalleled magnificence. 

 And on the sofa in the kitchen below, tossed and dozed the unhappiest boy in Kentish Town. He had escaped the police by a miracle, he was quit of Auntie, he was free of the selling of matches, but tomorrow or the day after he was leaving the only friends he had ever known. As for the sea and Mr. Thompson and the Margaret Carey, there was some subtle but deadly instinct in him that had warned him already. There would be no Mother to wash him and bind his wounds, or to give him fried bacon and see 

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