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After this we found ourselves in the glare immediately under the platform of a booth; and two minutes later were mounting the rickety steps, less of our own choice than by pressure of the crowd behind. The treat promised us within was the Siege of Copenhagen with real fireworks, which as an entertainment would do as well as another. On the way up Hartnoll whispered to me to keep my hands in my breeches pockets, if I carried my money there; and almost on the same instant cried out that someone had stolen his dirk. He stood lamenting, pointing to the empty sheath, while a stout woman at a table took our entrance-money with an impassive face. The Siege of Copenhagen was what you youngsters nowadays would call a ‘fizzle,’ I believe: or maybe Hartnoll’s face of woe and groanings over his lost dirk damped the fireworks for me. But these were followed by a performing pony, which, after some tricks, being invited by his master to indicate among the audience a gentleman addicted to kissing the ladies and running away, thrust its muzzle affectionately into my waistcoat; whereat Hartnoll recovered his spirits at a bound, and treacherously laughed louder than any of the audience. I thought it infernally bad taste, and told him so. But, as it happened, I had a very short while to wait for revenge: for in the very next booth, being invited to pinch the biceps of the Fat Woman, my gentleman-of-the-world blushed to the eyes, cast a wild look around for escape, and turned, to fall into the arms of a couple of saucy girls who pushed him forward to hold him to his bargain. His eyes were red–he was positively crying with shame and anger–when we found ourselves outside under the torchlights that made flaming haloes in the fog.

“Hang it, Rodd! I’ve had enough of this fair. Let’s get back to the Posts.”

“What’s the time?” said I, and felt for my watch.

My watch had disappeared.

It had been my mother’s parting gift, and somehow the loss of it made me feel, with a shock, utterly alone in the world. Why on earth had I not clung to the respectable shelter of the Blue Posts? What a hollow mockery were these brazen cymbals, these hoarse inviting voices, these coarse show-cloths, these lights!

Curiously enough, and as if in instant sympathy with my dejection, the cymbals ceased to clash. The showmen began to extinguish their torches. I had lost my watch; Hartnoll did not own one. But we agreed that, at latest, the hour could not be much more than ten. Yet the shows were closing, the populace was melting away into the fog.

“I’ve had enough of this. Let’s get back to the Posts,” Hartnoll repeated. His eyes told me that up to two days ago, when he left home, nine o’clock or thereabouts had been his regular bedtime. It had been mine also.

One of the two saucy girls, happening to pass an instant before the booth above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest way to the Blue Posts.

I will give you her exact answer. She said–“Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Blue Postesses.”

I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look, with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one, however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide. “Poor lads!” she went on, “you’ll certainly never reach it without help, though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I’d go with you myself if I weren’t due at the theatre in ten minutes’ time. I have to call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss it will mean losing an engagement.” She puckered her brow thoughtfully, and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I’ll wager that girl had a good heart. “Your best plan,” she decided, “is to step along with me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we’ll soon find somebody to put you in the way.”