Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City His Progress and Adventures

So, after being expelled from Hunker Court, Cleg made straight for his own nook among the crags. Here, like a prudent outlaw, he took account of his possessions to arrange his future career of crime. He turned out his pockets into his hat. This was, indeed, a curious thing to do. The article, which he wore upon his shaggy locks, was now little more than the rim of what had once been a covering for the head, proof against wind and water. But though Cleg’s treasures rested upon the ground, the fact that they were within his hat-rim focussed them, as it were, and their relative worth was the more easily determined.

The first article that Cleg deposited upon the ground inside his hat was a box of matches, which had been given him to light the gas within the outlying corners of Hunker Court school, for that dank cellar was gloomy enough even on a summer afternoon. Then came some string, the long-pronged nipping wires that he had taken from his father’s stores, a pair of pincers, a knife with one whole and one broken blade, a pipe, some brown-paper tobacco of a good brand, a half-written exercise book from the day-school at which Cleg occasionally looked in, five marbles of a variety known as “communities,” one noble knuckler of alabaster which Cleg would not have parted with for his life, a piece of dry bread, and, lastly, half an apple, with encroaching bays and projecting promontories, which indicated in every case but one the gap in Cleg’s dental formation on the left side of his upper jaw, which dated from his great fight with Hole in the Wa’ in the police yard.

The exception was a clean semicircle, bitten right into the apple-core. This was the tidemark of a friendly bite Cleg had given a friend whose double row had no gaps. The teeth had made the perfect crescent of a lassie—one Vara Kavannah. To its owner, the box of matches was the most attractive article in this array of wealth. Cleg looked into his hat-rim with manifest pleasure. He slapped his knee. He felt that he was indeed well adapted to the profession of outlaw. If he had to be a Cain, he could at least make it exceedingly lively in the Land of Nod. It was a chilly day on the Craigs, the wind blowing bask from the East, and everything underfoot as dry as tinder. The wild thought of a yet untried ploy surged in Cleg’s mind. He grasped the matchbox quickly, with thoughts of arson crystallizing in his mind. He almost wished that he had set Hunker Court itself on fire. But he remembered Vara Kavannah and her little brother Hugh just in time.