Like animals better clad than he, yet like him able to endure cold, he revelled in mere heat when he could come by it.

Sometimes he stood at the back of a baker's oven, for he knew all the haunts of heat about the city; sometimes he buried himself in the sids (husks of oats) lying ready to feed the kiln of a meal-mill; sometimes he lay by the furnace of the steam-engine of the water-works.

One man employed there, when his time was at night, always made a bed for Gibbie: he had lost his own only child, and this one of nobody's was a comfort to him.
Even those who looked upon wandering as wicked, only scolded into the sweet upturned face, pouring gall into a cup of wine too full to receive a drop of it--and did not hand him over to the police.
Useless verily that would have been, for the police would as soon have thought of taking up a town sparrow as Gibbie, and would only have laughed at the idea.

They knew Gibbie's merits better than any of those good people imagined his faults.

It requires either wisdom or large experience to know that a child is not necessarily wicked even if born and brought up in a far viler entourage than was Gibbie.
The merits the police recognized in him were mainly two--neither of small consequence in their eyes; the first, the negative, yet more important one, that of utter harmlessness; the second, and positive one--a passion and power for rendering help, taking notable shape chiefly in two ways, upon both of which I have already more than touched.