performer. A little boy with reddish hair and blackened face was turning
somersaults with wonderful rapidity in the centre of the pathway.
Another boy, cap in hand, stood by his side. The boy who performed and
the boy who begged both looked audacious and disreputable; but, owing
to their tiny statures, and the cadaverous whiteness of their faces,
there was something pathetic in the spectacle. The boy who stood with
his cap waiting for stray half-pence or pence to be dropped into it,
had large blue eyes, which were turned with marvelous rapidity, first
in the direction of one spectator, then in that of another. He could
pick out the people who were hopeful, and whose purse-strings were
likely to be loosened, with the swiftest of glances; and his little
cap received many doles, considering the nature of the crowd who looked
on.

Dent, who had come up to Will, tossed the boy a half-penny, and then
began to laugh heartily, at the rapid contortions of the little acrobat.

"Stop that!" said Will, angrily.

He stepped into the middle of the crowd, and caught the revolving boy
suddenly by his shoulder.

"You have no call to be out at this hour, Nat--nor you neither, Thady.
What will your sister say when she finds you not in? Bad boys--run
home this minute. This ain't what your mother would have liked; and
you know it."

The boy called Thady, otherwise the captain, raised his blue eyes, now
swimming in tears, to Will's face.