After a time, when he had recovered from his violent emotion, he glanced toward the interior of the store and saw two or three grown persons and several little girls talking with the German. One of these little girls held in her arms the lady of his thoughts. He felt like rushing upon them frantically, but he forbore, for it occurred to him that his appearance was not in his favor, and that there would be every chance of his getting a sound drubbing and being handed over to the police. He stood rooted to the threshold, meditating upon the horrors of the slave-trade, upon this heinous Tyrolese institution wherein a few dollars decided the fate of honest creatures, exposing them to the savage destructiveness of ill-bred children. Human nature appeared to him in all its baseness. Those who had purchased the lady left the shop and entered a luxurious carriage. And how they laughed, the wretches! Even the wee fellow, the most petted and spoiled of them all, no doubt, took the liberty of pulling the unfortunate doll by the arms, although he had the greatest quantity of toys appropriate to his age and for his own exclusive enjoyment. The grown persons, too, seemed satisfied with the new acquisition. While the footman stood by to receive orders, Pacorrito, who was a person of heroic and daring resolutions, conceived the idea of swinging behind the carriage. This he did with that agility peculiar to the ragamuffin when he wishes to take a ride across the city. Stretching his neck to the right, he saw the arm of the lady who had been sacrificed to lucre sticking out of the window. This rigid arm and its pink fist spoke forcibly to his imagination, calling to him through the rumble of the wheels: "Save me, save me, my Pacorrito!" VI. Under the archway of the great dwelling before which the carriage stopped, Pacorrito's illusion vanished. A servant informed him that if he soiled the flagstones with his muddy feet, he would have his back-bone broken. Migajas retired before this overwhelming argument, but from that instant his heart was filled with a scorching thirst for vengeance. His fiery nature impelled him forward into the night of the unforeseen, into the arms of his fortune. His soul was well fitted to noisy and dramatic adventures, so what should he do but make a compact with those who removed the garbage from the house where his beloved lived enslaved; and by this means--which may not have been altogether poetical, but which revealed the shrewdness of a heart as big as the top of a pine-tree--he found his way into the palace. How his heart throbbed as he went up the stairs and into the kitchen! The thought of being near her confused him so that more than once his basket fell from his hand, spilling its contents down the steps. But nowhere could he see his lady-love. He often heard the screams of children at play, but nothing more.