‘It is yet seven kilos, my child. Ah, thou art going there, art thou? Thou lookest more fit to be going to thy bed at home. What takes a little roundhead like thee to travel the roads alone? Hast friends in Carhaix?’
‘I am going to St Brieuc, and then I am going to England. I am an English boy,’ said Pierre, the dull look which always came on his face when he tried to think, showing all the more plainly by reason of his utter weariness.
The kindly peasant crossed himself.
‘Ah,’ he muttered, ‘he is one of the good God’s Innocents; but all the more reason why I should care for him as far as I can.
‘See here, mon enfant,’ he went on in a louder voice, ‘I also go to Carhaix. I have nine little pigs in that barrel, which I go to sell at the market to-morrow. If thou hast a mind thou mayst climb in, if thou canst, behind the barrel, and nestle down among the straw. It is easier to drive than to walk, is it not?’
With grateful thanks, Pierre accepted the welcome offer, and, climbing in at the tail of the cart, he squeezed himself down in one of the corners where the straw was deep, and a couple of sacks afforded him some shelter from the night air. For although the rays of the sun were strong and fierce through the day, when it set the air was sharp and chilly.
‘So thou art an English boy—hey?’ said the man good-naturedly, pulling the sacks more comfortably over the little waif whom he had befriended. But Pierre was too utterly worn out to answer him; and, now that the necessity for exertion was over, he lay back in the straw, speechless and exhausted, conscious only of the ever-increasing pain in his head, which the jolting of the cart made almost intolerable.
‘Poor little one, he is nearly dead with fatigue!’ thought this Good Samaritan. ‘I wonder where he has come from, and if he has had any food? Here is a morsel of sausage and a roll left, and a mouthful of red wine at the bottom of my flagon. My Marie, bless her heart! is always afraid that I starve before I reach Carhaix.—Here, my child, take a drink of this,’ and he stretched over and put the mouth of the flagon to Pierre’s parched lips.
It was but the red wine of the country, poor and thin and sour, but it revived the weary little traveller wonderfully, and by the time he had eaten the roll of bread and the bit of sausage he felt much stronger, and the pain in his head was not quite so bad as it was before.
‘I come from the mountains. I am going to England. I am an English boy.’ This was all the information the honest countryman could glean from him, although he plied him with questions until the roofs of Carhaix came in sight, a gray, uninteresting-looking place, composed of concrete houses built round a square.