sofas with horsehair stuffing bulging out of holes in their covering,
mirrors with blotches or cracks in them. The insides of the houses were
as gloomy as the outside. They were all exactly alike. In each a dark
entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up to bedrooms, and to
narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen. The back bedroom looked
out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats quarreled, or sat on
the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime they might feel the
sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road, and through their
windows came the roar and rattle of it. It was shabby and cheerless on
the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy ones it was the most forlorn
place in London.

At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No. 7.

He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco Loristan, and he
was the kind of boy people look at a second time when they have looked
at him once. In the first place, he was a very big boy--tall for his
years, and with a particularly strong frame. His shoulders were broad
and his arms and legs were long and powerful. He was quite used to
hearing people say, as they glanced at him, "What a fine, big lad!" And
then they always looked again at his face. It was not an English face
or an American one, and was very dark in coloring. His features were
strong, his black hair grew on his head like a mat, his eyes were large
and deep set, and looked out between thick, straight, black lashes. He
was as un-English a boy as one could imagine, and an observing person
would have been struck at once by a sort of _silent_ look expressed by
his whole face, a look which suggested that he was not a boy who talked