[Gutenberg 56933] • The Village Champion

Excerpt from The Village Champion

IT was towards the end Of a very hot summer, and all the human population Of that crowded square of the great city had spent the first half of the night in the streets. Either that, or in leaning halfway out of their Windows to get a breath of fresh air.

Now that sunrise was again so near at hand, however, and the breeze from the sea had done SO much to make the world more comfortable to live in, the closely-built hotels and tenement houses were all asleep.

The former were mostly of the sort that sell lager beer and other things in the basement, and the latter were just the kind of places in which men and women ought not to live.

Up in the third-story front room Of one Of those hotels, however, a boy Of about seventeen - a well built, dark-eyed, curly-headed, handsome boy sat on a wooden-seated chair, wide-awake, and seemed to be studying the condition of somebody who lay on the bed near him.

There was a curiously-set expression Of deter mination on the bright, young face, very much as if he had made up his mind to do something, and did not mean to be very long in going about it.