teach him to feed the dogs. When he gets bigger, he can clean the guns."

"I will let no man or boy clean the guns for you but myself, Sir Keith,"
the old man said, quite simply, and without a shadow of disrespect, "I
will hef no risks of the kind."

"Very well, then; but go and get the boy, and make him at home as much
as you can. Feed him up."

"Who is it, Keith?" his cousin said, "that you are speaking of as if he
was a sheep or a calf?"

"Faith," said he, laughing, "if the philanthropists heard of it, they
would prosecute me for slave-stealing. I bought the boy--for a
sovereign."

"I think you have made a bad bargain, Keith," his mother said; but she
was quite prepared to hear of some absurd whim of his.

"Well," said he, "I was going into Trafalgar Square, where the National
Gallery of pictures is, mother, and there is a cab-stand in the street,
and there was a cabman standing there, munching at a lump of dry bread
that he cut with a jack-knife. I never saw a cabman do that before; I
should have been less surprised if he had been having a chicken and a
bottle of port. However, in front of this big cabman this little chap I
have brought with me was standing; quite in rags; no shoes on his feet,
no cap on his wild hair; and he was looking fixedly at the big lump of
bread. I never saw any animal look so starved and so hungry; his eyes
were quite glazed with the fascination of seeing the man ploughing away
at this lump of loaf. And I never saw any child so thin. His hands were