When Billy reached the age of ten he was still residing in a “third floor back” in an unsavoury court of which the narrow entrance is in Chapel Street, a short thoroughfare running from Lamb’s Conduit Street to Milman Street. But Billy was not much at home; nor was Billy’s grandmother aforesaid,--a prematurely aged and doddering person who earned precarious pence by perfunctorily sweeping crossings in an adjacent square. At night the two shared the shelter of the third floor back, and breathed till morning light, or darkness, the poisonous air of the miserable apartment. In warm fine weather Billy kept late hours. Sometimes, like the people who were “seeing life”--Heaven save the mark!--the boy did not go home till morning. Billy, like many another gutter child in London, knew much of its night side--the side known to the policemen, to hansom-cabmen, and to hospital nurses on night duty, who look out of window when cabs rattle up to certain neighbouring houses. Editors and journalists know also of that night side, but all things are not for publication. Half the world is ignorant of the deadly canker eating into the vitals of the nation; and the other half keeps silence. It was through being out late at night that Billy lost his leg. It fell out thus: Billy, dead tired, was sleeping in a doorway at the top of Bedford Row, when the vigilant eye of P.C. Dormer espied his small and huddled form. The law, through the eyes of the constabulary, looks with sternness on such lapses from well-ordered life and habits. The open-air treatment must not be adopted on your own responsibility. If you have no home--well, you ought to have. You may walk the king’s highway, but if that grows fatiguing and you slumber on a doorstep, it is the plain duty of P.C. Dormer to rouse and move you on. In effect, to be homeless is to be criminal, and to wander abroad without any visible means of subsistence, brings man or boy within the purview of the law. Lucky for you if P.C. Dormer does not see reason to conclude that incidentally you are loitering with intent to commit a felony. So Billy was shaken, and slumbered again; he did not rise, but the policeman’s temper did. So the grip of a mighty hand came upon Billy’s bony little shoulder, making him call out sharply and then whimper.