Paul awakened suddenly, half sat up, grinned, grabbed at something on the ground beside him and wriggled out between the wheels. "How long you been there?" "About two hours," said Paul. "Why didn't yer wake me?" "I didn't like to disturb thee," said Paul. "Did yer go home?" "Ay," said Paul. "Into the house?" Paul nodded and smiled. Now, that it was all over, he could smile. But only afterwards, when he had greater command of language, could he describe the awful terror that shook his soul when he opened the front door, crept twice through the darkness of the sleeping kitchen and noiselessly closed the door again. For many months he felt the terror of his dreams. Briefly he told Barney Bill of his exploit. How he had to lurk in the shadow of the street during the end of a battle between the Buttons, in which the lodgers and a policeman had intervened. How he had to wait--interminable hours--until the house was quiet. How he had stumbled over things in the drunken disorder of the kitchen floor, dreading to arouse the four elder little Buttons who slept in the room. How narrowly he had missed running into the arms of the policeman who had passed the door some seconds before he opened it. How he had crouched on the pavement until the policeman turned the corner, and how he had fled in the opposite direction. "And if yer mother had caught ye, what would she have done to yer?" "Half-killed me," said Paul. Barney Bill twisted his head on one side and looked at him out of his twinkling eyes. Paul thought he resembled a grotesque bird. "Wot did yer do it for?" he asked. "This," said Paul, holding out a grubby palm in which lay the precious cornelian heart. His friend blinked at it. "Wot the blazes is the good of that?" "It's a talisman," replied Paul, who, having come across the word in a book, had at once applied it to his treasure. "Lor' lumme!" cried Barney Bill. "And it was for that bit of stuff yer ran the risk of being flayed alive by yer loving parents?" Paul was quick to detect a note of admiration underlying the superficial contemptuousness of the words. "I'd ha' gone through fire and water for it," he declared theatrically. "Lor' lumme!" said Barney Bill again. "I got summat else," said Paul, taking from his pocket his little pack of Sunday-school cards. Barney Bill examined them gravely. "I think you'd better do away with these." "Why?" "They establishes yer identity," said Barney Bill. "What's that?" Barney Bill explained. Paul was running away from home. The police, informed of the fact, would raise a hue-and-cry. The cards, if found, would be evidence. Paul laughed. The constabulary was not popular in Budge Street. "Mother ain't going to ha' nowt to do with the police, nor father, either." He hinted that the cards might be useful later. His childish vanity loved the trivial encomiums inscribed thereon. They would impress beholders who had not the same reasons for preoccupation as Barney Bill.