"It had been a bad night for selling papers, I had a few coppers only, and my heart sank down when I approached the hovel where we all lived. The man and woman were quarrelling violently. As I slunk in white of face and with a terrible quaking feeling inside me, I saw at once the man was worse than he had ever been, and as I entered the door of the squalid room he struck the woman an awful blow, then he saw me. He grabbed me, and I think might have killed me that night, but I wrenched myself away after he had given me the first blows; he pursued me, catching at my coat, which at the best of times was only rags; he tore part of the coat away, which was left in his hand, and I ran for dear life. The man was mad and didn't know what he was doing, maybe, but the only thing he could lay his hands upon was a broken brandy bottle; he hurled this at my head. It struck me as I reached the street and cut the back of my head open. Although I was hurt I staggered on. I was dizzy and sick and the blood was dripping all over my shirt, but though I swayed about I never stopped, I would go anywhere away from the horror of that place. I never meant to go back there again. "The next thing I remember was some sort of Square, which I had never seen until then, for I had never gone so far West in London before. There was nobody about, and I sank down beside a sort of stone thing and held my head, which hurt me horribly, and began to cry, I think. "I was only about ten or eleven years old at that time, if as much, for no record of my age had ever been kept. Whether it was the pain, or simply fright because the few clothes I had were covered in blood from the wound in my head where the bottle had cut me, I don't know, but there is no doubt that I lost consciousness, probably for some considerable time. When I came to myself and woke up, it must have been very late at night. It was a fairly cold night, but the moon was shining, and the Square where I was sitting all looked like polished silver, and the clock of a big church at the side of the Square boomed out one. "I looked about me, and raised myself up painfully upon one elbow and tried to think. "Here I was outside everything--no shelter, no home, alone in London with a vengeance. True the other place had been a hateful home, yet at the very worst it had been a shelter, and, moreover, the rough-haired dog Sam and I had somehow squeezed together to keep ourselves warm, and Sam was the only thing that was in any way fond of me, and Sam was really good company. "As the thought of him came across my mind, and how I had lost him for good now, I think I was about to start crying again, when a rather gruff but quite kindly voice just over my head called out-- "'Now then, stop that.'