half-consciousness. The eyes which had so often watched for "cops,"
and which had won for Keekie Joe his nickname, were half closed and he
could hardly stand. Such a price for four cigarettes!

The eyes which had been so faithful to a doubtful trust and won the pay
of an apple core, could not be trusted now to stay open while he sat, a
ragged, lonely figure, on the shore dangling his line in quest of a
morsel to eat. It was funny how these eyes, which had served others so
well, seemed about to go back on their owner now. But so it was. And
then, in a moment, a very strange thing happened.

As Keekie Joe leaned against the doorway blinking his eyes, he happened
to look up at the moon and it seemed (probably because his eyes were
blinking), it _seemed_ as if the man in the moon winked at him, in a
way shrewdly significant as if he might have something up his sleeve.
Anyway, he could not keep his eyes open; sleep, for a little while at
least, had triumphed over hunger and the faithful little sentinel of
Barrel Alley stumbled over to the pile of net and sank down, exhausted,
upon it.

And Keekie Joe dreamed a dream. A most outlandish dream. He dreamed
that the licorice jaw-breaker which that strange boy had thrown at him
was the size of a brick, and that as it fell upon the ground it broke
into a thousand luscious fragments like the pane of plate-glass through
which Keekie Joe had lately thrown a rock. He picked up the fragments
and ate them, and there before him stood the strange, small boy, who
threw a sponge cake directly at his head and hit him with it _plunk_.
"Wotcher chuckin' dem at me fer?" Keekie Joe demanded menacingly.

But the small, strange boy (apparently without either fear or manners)