As he sat on the bottom step of the warehouse, with his throbbing head pressed against the cold stone, he beheld a heavy railway car drawn by a mighty horse come up with a shattering rattle to the door of the great building. The man who was driving it cast the reins on the horse’s neck, and standing upon the dray shouted up into the second storey. Thereupon a door was opened in the wall of the warehouse, and a large box attached to the hook of a crane was swung outwards and downwards towards the dray. As the drayman proceeded to assist it on to the dray and to disengage it from the hook, the mighty horse grew impatient and began to prance. “Whoa there, you ----!” called out the drayman to the horse. Standing on the kerb at the opposite side of the street watching these proceedings was a small and pale urchin, whose clothes were in rags and whose toes were bursting through his shoes. Suddenly with amazing daring and rapidity he darted between a hansom, two omnibuses and a covered van, and peremptorily seized the head of the great horse. “Nah then,” he said to the horse sharply, “worrer yer at? Kim up.” He gave the great horse a blow on the neck and backed it a yard or two. “Good kid,” said the drayman, unhooking another box from the crane, “hold him there a bit.” The boy seated on the bottom step of the warehouse assimilated every detail of these proceedings. He pondered them deeply. And as he did so, quite suddenly a flash of meaning made his pulses quiver. Instantly he withdrew his throbbing head from the cold stone, and rose heavily. He approached the ragged urchin who was still holding the head of the great horse. “I--I b-beg y-your p-pardon,” he said, addressing the urchin with immense politeness, “but I--I a-assume you will r-receive a p-piece of silver for this brave action?” “Come again,” said the urchin, who was not accustomed to this mode of address. The boy contrived to grasp that his meaning was not understood. “The s-street-p-per--t-the m-man on the--on the c-car will give you a p-piece of s-silver because you make the great horse stand still,” he stammered, in order to make it clearer. “Piece o’ silver!” said the urchin derisively. “More likely to gimme a thick ear. Lucky if I git the price of a fag.” The boy retired to the bottom step of the warehouse with this mysterious piece of information. With infinite pains he had mastered, as far as he was aware, all the coins in the currency; he had come to believe that he knew the appearance and purchasing power of them all, from the farthing to the sovereign, from the halfpenny stamp to the five-pound note. But he had never encountered “a thick ear,” or “the price of a fag,” in all his researches. Timidly, reluctantly he went back to the urchin. “I--I beg y-your p-pardon,” he said as courteously as before, “but w-would you m-mind informing me what is the monetary value of the price of a fag?”