receive a drop of it -- and did not hand him over to the police.
Useless verily that would have been, for the police would as soon
have thought of taking up a town sparrow as Gibbie, and would only
have laughed at the idea. They knew Gibbie's merits better than any
of those good people imagined his faults. It requires either wisdom
or large experience to know that a child is not necessarily wicked
even if born and brought up in a far viler entourage than was
Gibbie.

The merits the police recognized in him were mainly two -- neither of
small consequence in their eyes; the first, the negative, yet more
important one, that of utter harmlessness; the second, and positive
one -- a passion and power for rendering help, taking notable shape
chiefly in two ways, upon both of which I have already more than
touched. The first was the peculiar faculty now pretty generally
known -- his great gift, some, his great luck, others called it -- for
finding things lost. It was no wonder the town crier had sought his
acquaintance, and when secured, had cultivated it -- neither a
difficult task; for the boy, ever since he could remember, had been
in the habit, as often as he saw the crier, or heard his tuck of
drum in the distance, of joining him and following, until he had
acquainted himself with all particulars concerning everything
proclaimed as missing. The moment he had mastered the facts
announced, he would dart away to search, and not unfrequently to
return with the thing sought. But it was not by any means only
things sought that he found. He continued to come upon things of
which he had no simulacrum in his phantasy. These, having no longer
a father to carry them to, he now, their owners unknown, took to the
crier, who always pretended to receive them with a suspicion which
Gibbie understood as little as the other really felt, and at once