“Go home! How? Separated from my friends, who perhaps by now are dead!” The words came with a sob, “Go! How? Hunted from place to place like a wolf!” He tried to rise, but sank back. “Ill? Yes,” he groaned; “deadly faint. You don’t know what I have suffered. I am starving.”
“How long have you been here?” said Waller, whose sympathies were growing more and more strong in favour of his prisoner.
“I don’t know. Days.”
“But why were you starving?” said Waller half-indignantly.
“Why should I not be?” said the boy bitterly. “Alone in these wilds.”
“Well,” cried Waller. “I shouldn’t have starved if I had been like you. I should have liked it, and had rather a jolly time,” and he gazed hard at the delicate-looking lad, whose very aspect, in spite of his disorder, suggested that he had led a gentle life, possibly mingling with the followers of the Court.
The gaze was returned—a gaze full of wonderment.
“What would you have done?” said the stranger. “Eaten the bitter acorns and the leaves?”
“No,” cried Waller, laughing, “I should just think not! Why, I should have done as Bunny Wrigg would—scraped myself out a good hole in the side of one of the sandpits, half-filled it with dry bracken for my bed, made a corner for my fire somewhere outside, and then had a good go in at the rabbits and the fish; and there are plenty of pig-nuts and truffles, if you know how to hunt for them. There are several places where you can get mushrooms out in the open part among the furze where the grass grows short; and then there’s that kind that grows on the oak-trees. You can trap birds, too, or knock over ducks that come down the stream if you are lucky. I have several times got one with a bow and arrow. Oh, there are lots of ways to keep from starving out in the woods.”
“Ah,” said the lad feebly, “you are a country boy. I come from French cities, and know nothing of these things.”