exact thief crossed his perturbed mind. Bad as Grabman's character might
be, he held a respectable position compared with the other lodgers in the
house. Bill the cracksman, naturally and by vocation, suggested the hand
that had despoiled him: how hope for redress or extort surrender from
such a quarter? Mechanically, however, when the hour arrived to return
to his day's task, he stole down the stairs, and lo, at the very door of
the house Bill's children were at play, and in the hand of the eldest he
recognized what he called his "curril."

"Your curril!" interrupted St. John.

"Yes, curril,--vot the little 'uns bite afore they gets their teethin'."

St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or other been
puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded to him to continue. To
seize upon the urchin, and, in spite of kicks, bites, shrieks, or
scratches, repossess himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment.
The brat's clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the
coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced eye
and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief)
loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he charged and accused
and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine. Then, changing his
tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman
recovered his astonishment at such audacity, and comprehended the nature
of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the more indignant
from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness of innocence. Seizing Beck
by the nape of the neck, with a dexterous application of hand and foot he
sent him spinning into the kennel.

"Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!" cried Bill, in a voice of thunder; "and if