“An now,” continued his wife with increasing vehemence, “you’ve druv him at last to run away; don’t deny it.”
“He ain’t run away,” muttered Mr Darvell. “He ain’t got pluck enough to do that. He’s a coward, that’s what he is.”
“Coward!” cried his wife, now fairly roused, and standing in an aggressive attitude. “It’s you that are the coward, you great, hulking, stupid lout, to strike a weak boy half yer size. An’ to talk of goin’ to bed, an’ him wandering out there in the woods. My poor little gentle lad!”
She sank down on the settle and wrung her hands helplessly, but started up again the next minute with a sudden energy which seemed to petrify her husband.
“Put on your boots,” she said, pointing to them; and as Mr Darvell meekly obeyed she went on speaking quietly and rapidly. “Wake up Jack Gunn and send him down to Danecross. Tell him to ask at the rectory and at schoolmaster’s if they’ve seen the lad. Take your lantern and go into the woods. There’s gypsies camping out Hampden way; go there, and tell ’em to look out for him. Don’t you dare to come back without the lad. I’ll stop here, and burn a light and keep his supper ready. Poor little lad, he’ll be starved with hunger!”
But the night waned, and no tidings came of Frank. Jack Gunn came back from Danecross having learned nothing, and the poor mother’s fears increased. The boy must be wandering in those weary woods, afraid to come home—or perhaps lost. Such a thing had been known before now; and as the first streaks of light appeared in the sky, and she saw the dim figure of her husband returning alone, Mrs Darvell’s courage quite forsook her.
“I shall never see him no more,” she said to herself, and cried bitterly.
And where was “our Frank” meanwhile?
At the moment when Mrs Darvell began to climb Whiteleaf Hill with her heavy basket, Frank was lying at the foot of a big beech-tree in the wood near his home; his face was buried in his hands, and every now and then sobs shook his little thin frame. For it had been a most unfortunate day for him; everything had gone wrong, and by the time the evening came and work was over his father’s wrath was high. Frank knew what to expect, and he also remembered that there would be no mother at home to shield him from punishment, so waiting a favourable moment he slipped off into the wood before he was missed. Then he flung himself on the ground and cried, because he felt so tired, and weak, and hopeless; and as he thought of his father’s angry face and heavy uplifted hand he shivered with terror. How he longed for someone to comfort and speak kindly to him. Soon, he knew, his mother would be in from market; there would be a blazing fire at home, and supper, and a warm corner. Should he venture back? But then, morning would come again, and the hard work, and he would have to stumble along the sticky furrows all day, and there would be blows and threatenings to end with. No, he could not go back; it would be better even, he said to himself, to beg for his bread like the tramps he had seen sometimes in Danecross.