Phil's champion Author:Robert Richardson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE WAIF. i F the little domestic scene just described, there was a spectator of whom none of the actors were at all aware. A figure leaned ag... more »ainst the area railing and gazed down into the Kendalls' home. The shutters of the single window had not yet been closed, nor the blind drawn down, so that the watcher could see nearly everything that went on in the room. It was a strange enough figure to be found in a civilised land, but not an unfamiliar one to those who know large cities. He was a boy with a shambling, lean, but large-boned figure, a lean and hollow-cheeked face, and a large mouth. His shaggy, light-coloured hair fell over his brow in matted tangles, from between which a pair of keen and hungry eyes gleamed, as you might imagine a young tiger's eyes would gleam amid the reeds of his jungle. The boy was clad, if such a term can be applied to him at all, in a coat that had len made for a man,and that a tall one. It was of the sort often worn by Irish peasants, with long tails, which, in the case of the present wearer, trailed upon the ground, giving him a ludicrous and incongruous appearance, heightened by his ragged, brimless, beaver hat, which being also several sizes too large for him, fell down over the back of his head and rested on the nape of his neck. He wore knotted round his waist a girdle of rope, like a pilgrim monk of the Middle Ages,—but not, it is needless to say, from motives of penance or austere self-discipline,—which rude belt secured to the person of the wearer a pair of corduroy trousers, so tattered that it was a simple marvel how they hung together at all. Boots the boy had none. Such in outward aspect was Jim Nolan, a typical Bedouin of the purest type, if the epithet can be used in such a connection,—a nomad of the str...« less