Johnny was kissed by his mother for the brave speech, and the darkness hid the tear that came with it, though Johnny felt the tear all the same. It fired his mind and made him blurt out a thought which otherwise he would have kept in his own head. “It couldn’t be so very bad to steal a loaf,” he remarked with a wistful look round on the hungry ones. “I felt near doing it this mornin’ when a baker asked me to help his board off his heid. The smell o’ the new bread just took my heart, and I was like to bolt wi’ ane.” His father’s bony fingers gripped him by the ear, and the touch was no gentle one. “If ever you turn thief while I’m living,” he fiercely hissed out, “never come near me or look me in the face again! I wad rather see you deid, ay, and mysel’ too,” he brokenly added, with a quiver getting into his tones. The boy was moved and awed, and hurriedly answered— “I ken that, faither, but I couldna help the thought getting into my heid. I’ll run down to Mr Borland’s, and ask him to trust you two loaves till your hand gets weel. It’ll be nothing to him; I’ve seen you bring hame as much into your wages.” The father remained silent, but after a little pressing and pleading, said with a weary sigh— “Do as you please; it’ll sune be a’ ower noo.” The boy darted out of the house, afraid that his father might change his mind and command him to stay. Johnny, be it observed, was in rags, and wore boots which a cinder-gatherer would have passed in contempt in a dust-heap. Pinching hunger had given him a haggard and disreputable look, and all that he wanted to pass for one of my “bairns” were a dishonest heart and hand. Ten minutes’ walking brought him to the baker’s shop, which he thought was Mr Borland’s, but which had been quitted by that master more than a year before, in favour of one in a better locality. However, it was a baker’s shop still, and Johnny, noticing no change in the name, and seeing the place closed, began to knock gently at the door in hope that the occupant might be still within. There was no answer, and at length the boy, with a hazy idea that the baker might live behind the shop, went through a narrow entry to have a look at the back. By the dim light he picked out the window of the back shop. There were bags of flour and shelves of loaves dimly discernible within, but no light and no human face. A moving thing he did see, and a pair of shining eyes gruesome enough to have frightened the wits out of one less hungry, but a steady look for a moment or two showed him that the living creature was only a cat, which had got shut in, and was now mewing most piteously, as if imploring to be let out. The misery of another creature often draws us from our own. Johnny became interested in the cat, and its desperate scratchings and mewings, and, after watching it for some time—quite forgetful of the fact that he might be watched as well—said to himself— “It would be easy to push up the window and let the puir brute out.”