“Have a light, sir. The cigar’s no good to you, sir, without a light,” and the boy lit a match and held it up before the tip of the cigar still in Brent’s mouth. Brent woke up. He turned rather angrily at first, but the half-impudent, half-winning smile on the dirty but bright face looking up at him, while its owner stood on tiptoe with the burning match, checked the sharp rebuff on the end of his tongue. His mood changed. He allowed the boy to light his cigar. Then he took from his pocket at least half a dozen golden sovereigns, put them into the lad’s hand without looking at them, and turned away. The boy gasped. For an instant he hesitated, then he started to run. He had not gone more than a dozen steps when he stopped suddenly. He stood still for a moment and then came slowly back. “See here, mister,” he explained, with reluctant honesty, holding out the bright yellow coins toward Brent, “them isn’t ha’pence; them’s gold.” “I know it, youngster. You’re welcome to them. Here’s another for your honesty,” dropping one more sovereign into the grimy hand. The variety of emotion that revealed itself through the dirt on the small boy’s face was so rapid that Brent almost burst out laughing. But the climax surprised him. It was genuine pity in the bright brown eyes, when after a long silence the little lad came a bit closer, glanced significantly at the darkening river, and said: “I say, mister, a toff like you ain’t got no call to be here. You might fall in, you know, or some blokes might come along and chuck you in for your ticker. If you’re going to stay I’m going to stop along, too. I can swim, and the police-boats are right here at the Temple wharf.” And after a moment, he added, “Come up to Charing Cross and I’ll give you back the coin--all except the last one; I ain’t got no use for so much, not in a year.” Brent listened to this speech in amazement. “Good God! The boy thinks I am going to drown myself. He can’t account for indifference to gold on any other hypothesis,” he said to himself. Putting a friendly hand on the ragged shoulder, he replied, with reassuring heartiness: “Well, my lad, I’ll go with you to Charing Cross, if you like. But don’t be alarmed. I haven’t robbed a bank, or escaped from a lunatic asylum, or been jilted by a sweetheart. My only trouble is that I’ve got more of those things”--pointing to the clutched hand in which the boy still held his coins--“than I know what to do with. By the way, I don’t think I need a swim as much as you do.” The boy looked at him mystified and unbelieving. “Nobody’s got that, sir,” he said, answering the point in Brent’s remarks quite beyond his comprehension. “Even the Lord Mayor hasn’t got more coin than he can do with.”