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Into this unknown he set out.
CHAPTER IV.
QUESTIONS.
What kind of band was it which had left the child behind in its flight?
Were those fugitives Comprachicos?
We have already seen the account of the measures taken by William III.
and passed by Parliament against the malefactors, male and female,
called Comprachicos, otherwise Comprapequeños, otherwise Cheylas.
There are laws which disperse. The law acting against the Comprachicos
determined, not only the Comprachicos, but vagabonds of all sorts, on a
general flight.
It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater number of the
Comprachicos returned to Spain--many of them, as we have said, being
Basques.
The law for the protection of children had at first this strange result:
it caused many children to be abandoned.
The immediate effect of the penal statute was to produce a crowd of
children, found or rather lost. Nothing is easier to understand. Every
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