slender, quick-eyed imps, trained already to pass through broken window-
panes, on their precocious progress to the hulks.

The door was open, and gave a pleasant sight of the worthy family within.
Bill himself, a stout-looking fellow with a florid, jolly countenance,
and a pipe in his mouth, was sitting at his window, with his brawny legs
lolling on a table covered with the remains of a very tolerable
breakfast. Four small Bills were employed in certain sports which, no
doubt, according to the fashionable mode of education, instilled useful
lessons under the artful guise of playful amusement. Against the wall,
at one corner of the room, was affixed a row of bells, from which were
suspended exceedingly tempting apples by slender wires. Two of the boys
were engaged in the innocent entertainment of extricating the apples
without occasioning any alarm from the bells; a third was amusing himself
at a table, covered with mock rings and trinkets, in a way that seemed
really surprising; with the end of a finger, dipped probably in some
glutinous matter, he just touched one of the gewgaws, and lo, it
vanished!--vanished so magically that the quickest eye could scarcely
trace whither; sometimes up a cuff, sometimes into a shoe,--here, there,
anywhere, except back again upon the table. The fourth, an urchin
apparently about five years old,--he might be much younger, judging from
his stunted size; somewhat older, judging from the vicious acuteness of
his face,--on the floor under his father's chair, was diving his little
hand into the paternal pockets in search for a marble sportively hidden
in those capacious recesses. On the rising geniuses around him Bill the
cracksman looked, and his father's heart was proud. Pausing at the
threshold, Grabman looked in and said cheerfully, "Good-day to you; good-
day to you all, my little dears."

"Ah, Grabman," said Bill, rising, and making a bow,--for Bill valued