Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/224

200 later, and spied the little crouching figure, have permitted the child to sleep on? He was doing no harm, and the policeman might have known that had the boy a home to go to he would not have been found sleeping in the street.

I suppose he thought nothing about the matter, for he seized Benny by the collar and lifted him off the ground, and after shaking him as a terrier might shake a rat, he ordered him to move on, giving emphasis to his words by a cruel kick, which made Benny grind his teeth with pain, and hurry limping down the street.

He had not gone far before a clock near him began to strike slowly the hour of midnight. At the first stroke of the bell Benny started, and looked carefully around him. Clang went the second stroke.

"It must be the same," he muttered to himself.

The third stroke made him certain.

He was near Addler's Hall without knowing it. The tone of the church clock was as familiar to him as the voice of his father. Scores of times during the years of his childhood he had listened to that clang, waking up the midnight silence when all the others were asleep.

"I wonder if father's comed home yet? "he said to himself; "I'll go and see, anyhow."

Bowker's Row was as silent as the grave, and, as usual, wrapped in darkness. But the darkness was no difficulty to Benny, as he made his way cautiously up the dingy street and into the dingier court that was once his home. It seemed very strange to him that he should be there alone