That’s what they all were. Fools. Clustered mindlessly around the opera house forecourt, without the sense God gave a mongrel dog. At least a dog was smart enough to guard its treasure, even if it was only a tasty bone. He scrambled up to the roof of a nearby building and crouched low, smiling privately at the image of himself as a mongrel dog among the sheep below. He’d always wanted a dog, but when his mam had been alive, she hadn’t wanted the mess, and once she’d died . . . well, he’d had enough trouble keeping himself fed, much less a dog. And there was Dublin’s Constabulary to contend with. They’d tried more than once to throw him into one of those priest-run prisons for wayward boys. He’d preferred to take his chances on the streets. At least there he was free—free to keep the few coppers he managed to earn running errands for the whores who’d been his dead mother’s companions at the end of her life. Free to steal whatever else he could get his hands on. Inevitably, he’d run afoul of the Constabulary one too many times and been forced to leave Ireland behind.
