started back on the return journey.

"Keep a sharp lookout for the b'ys," the kite-maker cautioned them.
"They 're like to be cruisin' round after dark."

"We 're not afraid," Charley assured him; "and we know how to take care
of ourselves."

Used to the broad and quiet streets of the Hill, the boys were shocked
and stunned by the life that teemed in the close-packed quarter. It
seemed some thick and monstrous growth of vegetation, and that they
were wading through it. They shrank closely together in the tangle of
narrow streets as though for protection, conscious of the strangeness
of it all, and how unrelated they were to it.

Children and babies sprawled on the sidewalk and under their feet.
Bareheaded and unkempt women gossiped in the doorways or passed back
and forth with scant marketings in their arms. There was a general
odor of decaying fruit and fish, a smell of staleness and putridity.
Big hulking men slouched by, and ragged little girls walked gingerly
through the confusion with foaming buckets of beer in their hands.
There was a clatter and garble of foreign tongues and brogues, shrill
cries, quarrels and wrangles, and the Pit pulsed with a great and
steady murmur, like the hum of the human hive that it was.

"Phew! I 'll be glad when we 're out of it," Fred said.

He spoke in a whisper, and Joe and Charley nodded grimly that they agreed
with him. They were not inclined to speech, and they walked as rapidly as
the crowd permitted, with much the same feelings as those of travelers in