Bella went out of the room, and gave the door a regular whisk to make it bang, but repented directly after, and let it strike against her foot, so that it was closed quietly.
Waller jumped up from his chair in an unwonted state of excitement, as soon as he was alone, and began to walk hurriedly up and down the room.
“Then it’s all true,” he mused. “There are soldiers about, and if they catch that poor fellow they will march him off to prison—and he is so ill after being hunted about. Oh, it’s too bad!” he continued, growing more and more excited. “And there’s no knowing what they would do. Why, they hung the poor wretch who wasn’t much more than a boy for stealing that sheep; and I believe it was only because he was hungry and out of work. Here, I know I oughtn’t to interfere, but father isn’t at home, and I feel as if I ought to do something. I want to do something. It seems so horrid. Suppose it had been I who went on like that poor fellow did. I don’t think I should ever do such a thing as he has, but what did he say? He came over with his father. Well, suppose I went over to France with my father. Of course, it isn’t likely, but one might have done such a thing, and I daresay they have got a New Forest in France. To be sure they have, and I know its name—Fountainebleau. Only fancy if I were being hunted through that place by soldiers. Ugh! If there was a young fellow there found me—a young fellow just about my age—and did not help me, he’d be a brute.”
In his excitement the boy went on marching up and down the quaint, old panelled dining-room, with his fists clenched and his eyes staring, as he recalled the scene in the woods that morning.
Just as he was opposite the door it was thrown open quickly by Bella, who entered with the tea-tray, and who stopped short, startled by the boy’s fierce looks, while as he turned sharply round to march to the other end of the room, Bella hurriedly placed the tea-tray upon the table, and then hastened back to go and tell Martha the cook that she believed Master Waller was going mad.
Chapter Six.
A Good Appetite.
“Yes, I’ll mad him,” retorted the cook, “if he comes meddling with my larder when my back’s turned. I have a very great mind not to finish cooking those sausage-meat cakes for his tea—behaving like that when the Squire’s out!”