He merely stated what he meant to do to the Drabble when he met him again. But the statement entered so much into unnecessary detail that there is no need to record it fully. ADVENTURE X. THE SQUARING OF THE POLICE. Cleg was free and barefoot. His father was "in" for twelve months. Also it was the summer season, and soft was the sun. The schools were shut—not that it mattered much as to that, for secular education was not much in Cleg's way, compulsory attendance being not as yet great in the land. Cleg had been spending the morning roosting on railings and "laying for softies"—by which he meant conversing with boys in nice clean jackets, with nice clean manners, whose methods of war and whose habit of speech were not Cleg's. Cleg had recently entered upon a new contract with the mistress of Roy's paper shop. He was now "outdoor boy" instead of "indoor boy," and he was glad of it. He had also taken new lodgings. For when the police took his father to prison, to the son's great relief and delight, the landlord of the little room by the brickfield had cast the few sticks of furniture and the mattress into the street, and, as he said, "made a complete clearance of the rubbish." He included Cleg. But it was not so easy to get rid of Cleg, for the boy had his private hoards in every crevice and behind every rafter. So that very night, with the root of a candle which he borrowed from a cellar window to which he had access (owing to his size and agility), he went back and ransacked his late home. He prised up the boards of the floor. He tore aside the laths where the plaster had given way. He removed the plaster itself with a tenpenny nail where it had been recently mended. He tore down the entire series of accumulated papers from the ceiling, disturbing myriads of insects both active and sluggish which do not need to be further particularised. "I'll learn auld Skinflint to turn my faither's property oot on the street," said Cleg, his national instinct against eviction coming strongly upon him. "I'll wager I can make this place so that the man what built it winna ken it the morn's morning!" And he kept his word. When Nathan, the Jew pawnbroker and cheap jeweller, came with his men to do a little cleaning up, the scene which struck them on entering, as a stone strikes the face, was, as the reporters say, simply appalling. The first step Mr. Nathan took brought down the ceiling-dust and its inhabitants in showers. The next took him, so far as his legs were concerned, into the floor beneath, for he had stepped through a hole, in which Cleg had discovered a rich deposit of silver spoons marked with an entire alphabet of initials. The police inspector was summoned, and he, in his turn, stood in amaze at the destruction. "It's that gaol-bird, young Kelly!" cried Nathan, dancing and chirruping in his inarticulate wrath. "I'll have him lagged for it—sure as I live."