Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand.
“Wot!” said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin. “This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!”
“You give me my money back, if you please,” said I, very much frightened; “and leave me alone.”
“Come to the pollis!” said the young man. “You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.”
“Give me my box and money, will you,” I cried, bursting into tears.
The young man still replied: “Come to the pollis!” and was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION.
For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a door-step, quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-
guinea.