Dickie was allowed to see his mother once before she was sent to the Penitentiary, and then he went back to the Poorhouse. He was a good deal cleaner by that time, and had on different clothing, but there was one plaything, or fetish, with which he had resolutely refused to part, and that still hung from his neck. It was a broken cairngorm stone, with a hole drilled at one end, through which a bit of twine had been drawn, that he might suspend the trinket from his neck. I had noticed the stone when I took him to the office with his mother, but merely glanced at it, thinking that it was but an imitation moulded in yellow glass. I was mistaken, for it was part of a real stone, and had probably been set in some stolen brooch which had been broken up for the metal. It was of no great value, but it pleased Dickie, and kept him from wearying during his long confinement in the Poorhouse, which to him was as irksome as being shut up in a prison. He was a lively, spirited boy, and had never been checked or curbed, so it may be imagined he got into as many scrapes as the average boy of his age. However, in spite of his mischief and wild pranks, Dickie had a soft spot in his heart, and could be tamed by a gentle word or appeal when lashing had been tried in vain. When he had been about eighteen months in the Poorhouse, a poor knife-grinder was admitted for a day or two, who told Dickie such grand romances of his free life on the road that the boy took an insatiable longing for freedom. Squinting Jerry was the man’s name, but though he had an evil look, he was really an honest fellow. Jerry had been driven to the Poorhouse for a night’s shelter, and while there had been laid up for a day or two with a bad leg which troubled him at times, but as soon as he was able to move he hastened to quit the oppressive confinement. Before he had done so, Dickie, by a series of pathetic appeals, had extracted from him a consent to receiving him as an apprentice. Jerry was really not reluctant to having an assistant, whom he needed sorely at times, but he was afraid that the arrangement might get him into trouble with the parochial authorities, should he be followed and Dickie taken back. Then there were Dickie’s antecedents to be considered—he was the son of a convict, and might have the “bad blood” in him, as Jerry expressed it. The old knife-grinder therefore agreed to the proposal with reluctance, as we often do with what turns out a great blessing. Dickie had no difficulty in fulfilling his part of the agreement, for he had already run away twice, and each time gone back of his own accord.