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“Look here,” said I, “if you said anything about another watch, understand that I didn’t hear. You don’t suppose I want to take it from you? I’m only too glad to have my own again, and thank you.”

“I thought ‘e might,” she said, only half-reassured, jerking a nod towards Hartnoll. “As for his dirk, I never took it, but I know the boy as did. He lives the way we’re going, and close down by the water; and if you spring a couple o’ tanners maybe I’ll make him give it up.”

“I’d give all I possess to get back that dirk,” said Hartnoll, and I believe he meant it.

“Come along, then,”–and we plunged yet deeper into the dark bowels of Portsmouth. The child had quite recovered her confidence, and as we went she explained to us quite frankly why her mother would be angry. The night–if I may translate out of her own language, which I forget– was an ideal one for pocket-picking, what with the crowd at the fair, and the fog, and (best of all, it seemed) the constables almost to a man drawn off to watch the roads around Fareham.

“But what,” I asked, “is the matter with Fareham?”

My ignorance staggered her. “What? Hadn’t we heard of the great Prize-fight?” We had not. “Not the great fight coming off between Jem Clark and the Dustman?” We were unfamiliar even with the heroes’ names.

She found this hard–very hard–to believe. Why, Portsmouth was full of it, word having come down from London the date was to-morrow, and that Fareham, or one of the villages near Fareham, the field of battle. The constabulary, too, had word of it–worse luck–and were on their mettle to break up the meeting, as the sportsmen of Portsmouth and its neighbourhood were all on their mettle to attend it. This, explained the child in her thin clear voice,–I can hear it now discoursing its sad, its infinitely weary wisdom to us two Johnny Newcomes,–this was the reason why the fair had closed early. The show-folk were all waiting, so to speak, for a nod. The tip given, they would all troop out northward, on each other’s heels, greedy for the aftermath of the fight. Rumour filled the air, and every rumour chased after the movements of the two principals and their trainers, of whom nothing was known for certain save that they had left London, and (it was said) had successfully dodged a line of runners posted for some leagues along the Bath and Portsmouth roads. For an hour, soon after sunset, the town had been stunned by a report that Brighton, after all, would be the venue: a second report said Newbury, or at any rate a point south-west of Reading. Fire drives out fire: a third report swore positively that Clark and the Dustman were in Portsmouth, in hiding, and would run the cordon in the small hours of the morning.

So much–and also that her own name was Meliar-Ann and her mother kept a sailor’s lodging-house–the small creature told us, still trotting by our side, until we found ourselves walking alongside a low wall over which we inhaled strong odours of the sea and of longshore sewage, and spied the riding-lights of the harbour looming through the fog. At the end of this we came to the high walls of a row of houses, all very quiet and black to the eye, except that here and there a chink of light showed through a window-shutter or the sill of a street-door. Throughout that long walk I had an uncanny sensation as of being led through a town bewitched, hushed, but wakeful and expectant of something. . . . I can get no nearer to explaining. We must have passed a score of taverns at least; of that I have assured myself by many a later exploration of Portsmouth: and in those days a Portsmouth tavern never closed day or night, save for the death of a landlord, nor always for that. But to-night a murmur at most distinguished it from the other houses in the street.