crouched down in a corner.

"What is it?" he said, hastily.

He might have asked "What is it?" even had he seen it well, as
presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered up in its
corner.

A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form
almost an infant's, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a
bad old man's. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen
years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life.
Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their
childish delicacy,--ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon
them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a
child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man,
but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast.

Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy
crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and
interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow.

"I'll bite," he said, "if you hit me!"

The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a sight as
this would have wrung the Chemist's heart. He looked upon it now,
coldly; but with a heavy effort to remember something--he did not
know what--he asked the boy what he did there, and whence he came.

"Where's the woman?" he replied. "I want to find the woman."