Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/246

 for joy. His heart beat fast, his feet made a few small skips, and he said as if he shared the boy’s joyous sense of freedom, “The world will smile upon thee wherever thou lookest upon it. And thou wilt easily find some Malka and no one will look down upon thee. I have rescued a soul from thy clutches, thou foul trade of the scavenger!”

Immediately after this Poldik sought another soul to rescue from the foul trade of scavenging, and did with him to a hair as he had done with his predecessor. He had already so many of these lads on the water that go which way he would for a walk, young wherrymen sprang to meet him and introduced themselves to him as to a father so that sometimes he was heard to mutter to himself, “I think I must be a wherryman myself when I have so many children at the trade.”

HIS Poldik wore a harsh and rude exterior, but if the heart is the real core and marrow of a man, within his harsh exterior there was an excellent core and marrow.

Many a year passed away. Poldik still stuck to his horse-doctoring, and was cited as an authority in his department and summoned to a horse’s sick-bed like a physician. He had plenty of practice, and scarcely time to get through it all. His wealth grew very prettily, and already he might have spent any day he chose as a holiday. He could drive his own carriage, too, and he did drive one; for he got horses of a higher grade to be put to rights, such as had been knocked to pieces by drunken coachmen. And Poldik drove these horses in a carriage which he had expressly procured for the purpose, in order to test how far they had progressed towards convalescence. And he also drove them that people might see how his horses improved after so many Sundays or so many days, and to maintain his credit with the world.

He drove out like a gentleman who has his own coachman. The coachman was always one of those boys who had been adopted to be cured of scavenging and trained to wherrying.

As to what pertains to these boys, Poldik acquired by his generosity towards them the reputation of being a good-hearted fellow: it was a fine and honourable thing to take the children of the poor into his house and to look after everything which they