But Tommy stood shaking. He fancied the darkness full of horses'

heads, and would not stir. Clare had to get out again, and search for a place to suit his fancy, which he found in an untenanted loose-box, with remains of litter. There Tommy coiled himself up, and was soon fast asleep.

Clare returned to the hospitality of the big horse. The great nostrils snuffed him over and over as he lay, and the boy knew the horse made him welcome. He dropped asleep stroking the muzzle of his chamber-fellow, and slept all the night, kept warm by the horse's breath, and the near furnace of his great body.

In the morning the boys found they had slept too long, for they were discovered. But though they were promptly ejected as vagabonds, and not without a few kicks and cuffs, these were not administered without the restraint of some mercy, for their appearance tended to move pity rather than indignation.

Chapter XVI.

On the tramp.

With the new day came the fresh necessity for breakfast, and the fresh interest in the discovery of it. But breakfast is a thing not always easiest to find where breakfasts most abound; nor was theirs when found that morning altogether of a sort to be envied, ill as they could afford to despise it. Pa.s.sing, on their goal-less way, a flour-mill, the door of which was half-open, they caught sight of a heap, whether floury dust or dusty flour, it would have been hard to say, that seemed waiting only for them to help themselves from it. Fain to still the craving of birds too early for any worm, they swallowed a considerable portion of it, choking as it was, nor met with rebuke. There was good food in it, and they might have fared worse.

Another day's tramp was thus inaugurated. How it was to end no one in the world knew less than the trampers.

Before it was over, a considerable change had pa.s.sed upon Clare; for a new era was begun in his history, and he started to grow more rapidly. Hitherto, while with his father or mother, or with his little sister, making life happy to her; even while at the farm, doing hard work, he had lived with much the same feeling with which he read a story: he was in the story, half dreaming, half acting it. The difference between a thing that pa.s.sed through his brain from the pages of a book, or arose in it as he lay in bed either awake or asleep, and the thing in which he shared the life and motion of the day, was not much marked in his consciousness. He was a dreamer with open eyes and ready hands, not clearly distinguishing thought and action, fancy and fact. Even the cold and hunger he had felt at the farm had not sufficed to wake him up; he had only had to wait and they were removed. But now that he did not know whence his hunger was to be satisfied, or where shelter was to be had; now also that there was a hunger outside him, and a cold that was not his, which yet he had to supply and to frustrate in the person of Tommy, life began to grow real to him; and, which was far more, he began to grow real to himself, as a power whose part it was to encounter the necessities thus presented. He began to understand that things were required of him. He had met some of these requirements before, and had satisfied them, but without knowing them as requirements. He did it half awake, not as a thinking and willing source of the motion demanded. He did it all by impulse, hardly by response. Now we are put into bodies, and sent into the world, to wake us up. We might go on dreaming for ages if we were left without bodies that the wind could blow upon, that the rain could wet, and the sun scorch, bodies to feel thirst and cold and hunger and wounds and weariness. The eternal plan was beginning to tell upon Clare. He was in process of being changed from a dreamer to a man. It is a good thing to be a dreamer, but it is a bad thing indeed to be _only_ a dreamer. He began to see that everybody in the world had to do something in order to get food; that he had worked for the farmer and his wife, and they had fed him. He had worked willingly and eaten gladly, but had not before put the two together. He saw now that men who would be men must work.

His eyes fell upon a congregation of rooks in a field by the roadside. "Are _they_ working?" he thought; "or are they stealing? If it be stealing they are at, it looks like hard work as well. It can't be stealing though; they were made to live, and _how_ are they to live if they don't grub? that's their work! Still the corn ain't theirs!

Perhaps it's only worms they take! Are the worms theirs? A man should die rather than steal, papa said. But, if they are stealing, the crows don't know it; and if they don't know it, they ain't thieves! Is that it?"

The same instant came the report of a gun. A crowd of rooks rose cawing. One of them dropped and lay.

"He must have been stealing," thought Clare, "for see what comes of it! Would they shoot me if I stole? Better be shot than die of hunger!

Yes, but better die of hunger than be a thief!"

He had read stories about thieves and honest boys, and had never seen any difficulty in the matter. Nor had he yet a notion of how difficult it is not to be a thief--that is, to be downright honest. If anybody thinks it easy, either he has not known much of life, or he has never tried to be honest; he has done just like other people. Clare did not know that many a boy whose heart sided with the honest boy in the story, has grown up a dishonourable man--a man ready to benefit himself to the disadvantage of others; that many a man who pa.s.ses for respectable in this disreputable world, is counted far meaner than a thief in the next, and is going there to be put in prison. But he began to see that it is not enough to mean well; that he must be sharp, and mind what he was about; else, with hunger worrying inside him, he might be a thief before he knew. He was on the way to discover that to think rightly--to be on the side of what is honourable when reading a story, is a very different thing from doing right, and being honourable, when the temptation is upon us. Many a boy when he reads this will say, "Of course it is!" and when the time comes, will be a sneak.

Those crows set Clare thinking; and it was well; for if he had not done as those thinkings taught him, he would have given a very different turn to his history. Meditation and resolve, on the top of honourable habit, brought him to this, that, when he saw what was right, he just did it--did it without hesitation, question, or struggle. Every man must, who would be a free man, who would not be the slave of the universe and of himself.

Chapter XVII.

The baker's cart.

The sweepings of the mill-floor did not last them long, and by the time they saw rising before them the spires and chimneys of the small county town to which the road had been leading them, they were very hungry indeed--as hungry as they well could be without having begun to grow faint. The moment he saw them, Clare began revolving in his mind once more, as many times on the way, what he was to do to get work: Tommy of course was too small to do anything, and Clare must earn enough for both. He could think of nothing but going into the shops, or knocking at the house-doors, and asking for something to do. So filled was he with his need of work, and with the undefined sense of a claim for work, that he never thought how much against him must be the outward appearance which had so dismayed himself when he saw it in the pond; never thought how unwilling any one would be to employ him, or what a disadvantage was the company of Tommy, who had every mark of a born thief.

I do not know if, on his tramps, Tommy had been in a town before, but to Clare all he saw bore the aspect of perfect novelty, notwithstanding the few city-shapes that floated in faintest shadow, like memories of old dreams, in his brain. He was delighted with the grand look of the place, with its many people and many shops. His hope of work at once became brilliant and convincing.

Noiselessly and suddenly Tommy started from his side, but so much occupied was he with what he beheld and what he thought, that he neither saw him go nor missed him when gone. He became again aware of him by finding himself pulled toward the entrance of a narrow lane.

Tommy pulled so hard that Clare yielded, and went with him into the lane, but stopped immediately. For he saw that Tommy had under his arm a big loaf, and the steam of newly-baked bread was fragrant in his nostrils. Never smoke so gracious greeted those of incense-loving priest. Tommy tugged and tugged, but Clare stood stock-still.

"Where did you get that beautiful loaf, Tommy?" he asked.

"Off on a baker's cart," said Tommy. "Don't be skeered; he never saw me! That was my business, an' I seed to 't."

"Then you stole it, Tommy?"

"Yes," grumbled Tommy, "--if that's the name you put upon it when your trousers is so slack you've got to hold on to them or they'd trip you up!"

"Where's the cart?"

"In the street there."

"Come along."

Clare took the loaf from Tommy, and turned to find the baker's cart. Tommy's face fell, and he was conscious only of bitterness. Why had he yielded to sentiment--not that he knew the word--when he longed like fire to bury his sharp teeth in that heavenly loaf? Love--not to mention a little fear--had urged him to carry it straight to Clare, and this was his reward! He was going to give him up to the baker!

There was grat.i.tude for you! He ought to have known better than trust _anybody_, even Clare! n.o.body was to be trusted but yourself! It did seem hard to Tommy.

They had scarcely turned the corner when they came upon the cart. The baker was looking the other way, talking to some one, and Clare thought to lay down the loaf and say nothing about it: there was no occasion for the ceremony of apology where offence was unknown. But in the very act the baker turned and saw him. He sprang upon him, and collared him. The baker was not nice to look at.

"I have you!" he cried, and shook him as if he would have shaken his head off.

"It's quite a mistake, sir!" was all Clare could get out, so fierce was the earthquake that rattled the house of his life.

"Mistaken am I? I like that!--Police!"

And with that the baker shook him again.

A policeman was not far off; he heard the man call, and came running.

"Here's a gen'leman as wants the honour o' your acquaintance, Bob!"

said the baker.

But Tommy saw that, from his size, he was more likely to get off than Clare if he told the truth.

"Please, policeman," he said, "it wasn't him; it was me as took the loaf."

"You little liar!" shouted the baker. "Didn't I see him with his hand on the loaf?"

"He was a puttin' of it back," said Tommy. "I wish he'd been somewheres else! See what he been an' got by it! If he'd only ha' let me run, there wouldn't ha' been n.o.body the wiser. I _am_ sorry I didn't run. Oh, I _ham_ so 'ungry!"

Tommy doubled himself up, with his hands inside the double.

"'Ungry, are you?" roared the baker. "That's what thieves off a baker's cart ought to be! They ought to be always 'ungry--'ungry to all eternity, they ought! An' that's what's goin' to be done to 'em!"

"Look here!" cried a pale-faced man in the front of the crowd, who seemed a mechanic. "There's a way of tellin' whether the boy's speakin' the truth _now_!"

He caught up the restored loaf, halved it cleverly, and handed each of the boys a part.

"Now, baker, what's to pay?" he said, and drew himself up, for the man was too angry at once to reply.

The boys were tearing at the delicious bread, blind and deaf to all about them.

"P'r'aps you would like to give _me_ in charge?" pursued their saviour.