Fully returning to reality, Gord looked around and got his bearings. He was at the edge of the worst part of the Slum Quarter, near the better sector where menial laborers and others of that ilk lived. This was unsafe territory for an urchin; these working people didn’t want Gord’s kind around, knowing that they were there only to steal what little these poor folk possessed. He turned to retrace his steps and then stopped: At this point, he had nothing more to lose.

Gord slid into the shallow space of a boarded-up doorway and scrutinized the area, not knowing what he was looking for but willing to settle for anything promising. The narrow alley he was in gave onto a wider lane just ahead. He saw occasional figures passing the mouth of the passage. Anything else? Glancing up, Gord saw a series of moving shadows. It took only a moment or two for him to figure out that someone had a line of washing hung out to dry on the rooftop across the way.

“Now here’s a stroke of real luck,” he thought, as he ascended the gap by pressing his feet against one wall and his back and palms against the other.

A few minutes later, a shabbily dressed boy entered Killcat Lane from a disused alley. From the look of him he could have been one of dozens of lads who traveled in this vicinity, a link-boy or bound-boy of some sort on an errand for master or mistress-perhaps even the son of a local resident. A closer look might have brought a question to the observer’s mind, however. Although the worn blouse and baggy trousers were clean, the wearer most certainly was not. And where were the lad’s sandals?

Aware that his disguise was not perfect, Gord was feeling confident nonetheless. He had managed to steal a set of clothes better than any he had ever worn before. Although there had been nothing on the laundry line worth taking for sale somewhere, at least he could now move freely through this part of the quarter to the Foreign Quarter nearby.