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half sovereigns and crowns to collect; maybe even brooches, silver hat pins, eyeglasses, watches and golden rings. They would all swirl around in this dark carousel, a great spinning ball of sticky mud which, if you were a lucky tosher and believed in the Lady of the Toshers, then you – yes, you – might be the lucky tosher who one day found a ball of mud like a big plum pudding. This was that wonderful thing known to the toshers as the
tosheroon
, which when you smashed it open would deliver unto you the fortune of a lifetime.
    Dodger had found all of those things separately at some time or other, and occasionally one or two together in a little nest in a crack, which he would make a note of in his head and, of course, go back to again. But while he could often come back with some goods that would make Solomon smile, he had never come across that great pie of dirt and jewels and money that was the key to a better life.
    But, he thought, what better life was there than a life on the tosh, at least if you were a Dodger? The world, which meant London, was built for him, just for him; it worked in his favour as if the Lady had meant it. Gold jewels and currency were heavy and got trapped easily, while dead cats, rats and richards tended to float, which was a good thing because you never like to tread in a dickie – thank goodness they floated. But, Dodger mused, as he almost absentmindedly but very methodically felt his way along the sewer, taking care to cover his favourite traps while at the same time keeping an eye out for any new ones, whatever would a tosher do if he got hold of such a thing as a real tosheroon? He knew them, the tosher lads, and when they had a good day, what did they do with their loot? What did they do with all the hard-earned money they had splashed through the muck for? They drank it, and the bigger the amount the more they drank. Maybe if they were sensible ones they’d put a bit aside for a bed for the night and a meal; in the morning they would be poor again.
    There was a
clink
under his fingers! That was the sound of two sixpences together in the spot he called ‘Old Faithful’ – a good start.
    Dodger knew that he had the edge on the other toshers; that was why he had broken every tosher rule and gone into a sewer during the storm, and it would have worked too if it hadn’t been for that fight and what had followed. Because if you had your eye to business, you could see places in the sewers where a tosher could hang on in a bubble of air while all around him the world raged. He’d found a good one, and while it was damned chilly, he would have been the first one down in this vicinity to reap the harvest of the night. Right now, he had to hurry because other toshers would be coming up the sewers towards him, and suddenly there was a glint in the gloom as the sun caught something. It went away instantly, but he had marked it in his mind and so he worked his way carefully to where his head told him the glint had been, and found a pile of muck on a little sandbank where the outflow of a smaller sewer flowed into this one; it was still dribbling.
    There it was – a dead rat, and in its jaws what looked like a gold tooth but turned out to be, as it happened, a half sovereign gripped tightly in the teeth of Mister Rat. You never, if you could help it, touched a rat, which was why Dodger carried a little crowbar with him down there. Using it together with his knife, he levered the nasty little jaws open and flicked the half sovereign out. Balancing the coin on the blade of his knife, he held it up to the trickle coming down the wall, giving it something of what you might call a wash.
    May every day be as good as this! Who would be a working man on such a day? A skilled chimney sweep would have to work for a week to get the money he had picked up today. Oh, to be a tosher on a day like this!
    Then he heard the groan . . .
    Dodger edged his way round the rat and into the smaller sewer, which