In the corners the hailstones were heaped up in great banks. You might have shovelled up barrels full. Most of them were the size of bird’s eggs. But some were bigger. Then we looked out doors. The ground was all white, and drifts in every cornering place, and the leaves stripped off the trees. Then we looked at one another, and he was just as pale as anything. He leaned against the wall, and I guessed he was crying. To see such a great boy crying seemed most as bad as the hailstorm. Maybe he didn’t cry. When he turned his head round again, says he: “Billy, I’m sick, and what shall I do?”
“Go home,” says I.
“No,” says he, “I won’t go home. And if you let ’em know, I’ll—” And then he picked up Gapper’s whip,—“I’ll flog you.”
“Flog away,” says I; “maybe I shall, and maybe I sha’ n’t.”
He dropped the whip down, and says he, “Billy, I sha’ n’t ever touch you. But they mustn’t know till I’m gone to sea.”
I asked him when he was going. And he told me all about it.
When he was sent away from school, he went into town and inquired about the wharves for a chance to go, and got one, and came back to get some things he left hid in the old house, and to wait till ’t was time to go. He sold his watch, and bought a great bag full of hard bread and cheese and cakes.
He was mad at Gapper for setting a man to watch, and so he took Rosy’s lamb. He was going to kill it. And then skin it. But he couldn’t do it. It licked his hand, and looked up so sorryful, he couldn’t do it. And when he cut his foot—he cut it chopping something. That’s why he stayed there so long. And he was the ghost that whistled. He knew the fellows wouldn’t go in to see what it was that whistled. And he ate up most all his things, and tied a string to the lamb, and let it out nights to eat grass, and then pulled it in again.
I wouldn’t have stayed there so for anything. He went into town three times, nights, to get victuals to eat. I don’t see what he wants to be such a kind of a boy for. He says he means to go to sea, and if ever he’s good he’s going home. I told him about his father and mother, and he walked while I was talking, and kept his back towards me. I asked him what ailed him, and he said ’t was partly cutting him, and partly sleeping cold nights, and partly the crackers and cheese. I gave him the rest of my meat, and he was glad enough.
He said he was ashamed to go home.