"He-ar! he-ar! Brayvo, brayvo, youngster! Well done our side! That's your style!" he cried, clapping his hands and stamping his feet as I stopped short, flushed and excited with the ideas that had come thronging to my brain, and then gazed at him in a shamefaced and bashful manner. "That's your sort, my boy, I like that. I say, did your father teach you that sorter thing." "Yes. Mr Rev--Yes, Bill." "I say, your par, as you called him, wasn't a fool." "My papa," I said proudly, "I mean my dear father, was the best and kindest of men." "That I'll lay sixpence he was. Why, I was feeling quite out of heart about you, and thinking you such a hinnocent young goose that I shouldn't know how to help you. Why, lookye here, I've been kicking about in the world ever since I was ten, and been in the police six years, and I couldn't make a speech like that." "Couldn't you, sir--Mr--I mean Bill?" "No, that I couldn't. Why, I tell you what. You and I'll stick together and I don't know what we mightn't make of you at last--p'r'aps Lord Mayor o' London. Or, look here, after a few years we might get you in the police." "In the police?" I faltered. "To be sure, and you being such a scholard and writing such a hand--I know it, you know. Lookye here," he continued, pulling out a pocket-book, from one of the wallets in which he drew a note I had written for Mary, "I say, you writing such a hand, and being well up in your spelling, you'd rise like a air balloon, and get to be sergeant, and inspector, and perhaps superintendent, and wear a sword! You mark my words, youngster; you've got a future before you." "Do you think so?" "I just do. I like you, young Antony, hang me if I don't; and if you stick to me I'll teach you all I know." "Will you?" I said eagerly. "Well, all I can. Just hand me that paper o' tobacco. Thankye. I'll have just one more pipe, and then we'll go to dinner." He filled and lit his pipe, and went on talking. "First and foremost, don't you get trying to smoke." "No, I will not," I said. "That's right. It's all very well for men, a little of it; but I don't like to see boys at it, as too many tries just now. I often sees 'em on my beat, and I never feel so jolly happy as when I come across one looking white after it about the gills, and so sick he can't hold his head straight up. But, as I was a-saying, you stick to me and I'll teach you all I can, and I know two or three things," he continued, closing one eye and opening it again. "You must, sir." "Yes; there's some clever chaps I have to deal with sometimes--roughs and thieves and the like; but they have to get up very early in the morning to take me in." "Do they, sir--Bill?" I said wonderingly. "There, now you're getting innocent again," he said sharply. "You don't mean to tell me as you don't understand that?" "Oh yes, I do: you mean that they would have to get up very early to master you--say at daybreak."