“Get out o’ this,” growled the constable. So Billy got out, into Theobald’s Road. There, at what he believed to be a safe distance, he found another lurking-place, and having had a fatiguing day in the streets, he fell asleep again. But the law was on his trail. P.C. Dormer’s bull’s-eye, searching nooks and doorways, discovered once again the insignificant rebel against social order. Dormer was greatly ruffled. At the corner of Gray’s Inn Road, half an hour earlier, he had encountered a band of hooligans, who, strong in numbers, had jeered at his authority. In such circumstances it was but police nature that he should take it out of somebody. And here was Billy, defying or ignoring the majesty of the law! With a howl of pain and terror the boy came out of his dreams to find himself once more in the grip of a superior force. He wriggled to the pavement and lay there sobbing. Then P.C. Dormer gave him a vicious kick and Billy screamed with agony. It was no good now to tell him to be off. To “move on” was a physical impossibility. He lay and writhed. The next day he was in hospital in Great Ormond Street. He was supposed to have been knocked down by a fire engine in a hurry. Billy knew better, but he held his peace. His bibulous grandmother told the matron that “there’d always been summat wrong with his ’ip.” There was something very wrong now; and presently they transferred the injured child to the Alexandra Hospital in Queen Square, where hip disease was a speciality. Surgeons came and went, and now and then there were operation days at intervals. There came a day when the operating knife was brought to bear on Billy, and when it had done its necessary work, Billy’s right leg was his no more, and for a time he had that weird experience of feeling pain in a member that was non-existent. Sister, staff-nurse, day nurses and night nurses--they were all kind and tender to the little one-legged patient. They assured him he would be all right now, and that he was going to have a beautiful little crutch to get along with presently. His grandmother came to see him on visitors’ days, blear-eyed and pendulous of lip. On those days, indeed, many impossible parents and guardians went up the stone stairs of the Alexandra, bringing cheap and noisy toys, and refreshments of a wholly inappropriate character. With the general throng came on one occasion a stalwart man who walked like a policeman. He was a policeman. It was P.C. Dormer. He was a good fellow in the main, and he had children of his own. At first Billy did not recognise him out of uniform. Then remembrance dawned, and to his amazement his quick pink eyes noted tears in the eyes of P.C. Dormer. Clumsily, ashamedly, the constable put a painted toy upon the bed, and Billy smiled. Then the big man, with hasty glance around, bent his great red face over him. “You ’aven’t spilt, ’ave you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “Not me,” said Billy, speaking very low, but very scornfully.