“Cut me 'ead off.”
“Right off. Right off—slish! Give me your hand; come on.”
Through a side door, avoiding the bar, they passed into the street. Kind night gave them cloaks of invisibility; no one was about. In a few minutes they had left the bold village street, were in timid lanes that turned and twisted hurrying through the high hedges.
Half a mile upon the further side of the station George that morning had passed a line of haystacks. Now he made for it, skirting the railway by a considerable distance.
The red-headed Pinner boy, exhausted by the pace of their walk, not unnaturally nervous, spoke for the first time: “Ain't you going to the station, mister?”
“Station? Certainly not. Do you think I am running away?”
The red-headed Pinner boy did not answer. This boy was recalling in every detail the gruesome story, read in a paper, of a bright young lad who had been foully done to death in a wood.
George continued: “I shall be back with you at the inn this evening, and I shall ask your father to give you a good thrashing for hiding in my room.”
In an earnest prayer the red-headed Pinner boy besought God that he might indeed be spared to receive that thrashing.