I felt that I turned pale and red by turns, as I walked out into the road, wondering what it would be best to do, when, to my great delight I saw that there was a side lane off to the left, just a little way through the village, and hurrying on, I found that it was quite a byway off the main road. Where it led to I did not know, only that there was a finger-post with the words “To Charlock Bridge” upon it, and turning down I walked quite a couple of miles before, completely worn out, I sat down beside a little brook that rippled across the clean-washed stones of the road, and made the most delicious meal I ever ate in my life.
Bread and cheese and spring water under the shade of a high hedge, in which a robin sat—it looked to me like the one I had seen in the wood—and darted down and picked up the crumbs I threw it from time to time. As my hunger began to be appeased, and I had thoroughly slaked my burning thirst, by using my closed hand for a scoop, I began to throw crumbs into the bubbling brook, to see them float down for some distance, and then be snapped up by the silvery little fishes with which the stream seemed to swarm. All the while, though, my head had been constantly turning from side to side, in search of danger, and at last just as I was about to continue my journey, hoping to gain the London Road once more, I saw the danger I sought, in the shape of the boy with my bundle running across the fields, as if he had come from the high road, and was trying to get into the lane below me to cut me off.
I looked sharply behind me, expecting to see the chaise of Mr Blakeford, but it was not in sight; so, stooping down, I waded quickly through the brook, kept under the shelter of the hedge, and ran on steadily, so as not to be out of breath.
The water filled my boots, but it only felt pleasantly cool, and, as I thought, made me better able to run, while, as I raised my head from time to time, I could catch sight of the boy with the bundle running hard across field after field, and losing so much time in getting through hedges or over gates that I felt that I should be past the spot where he would enter the lane before he could reach it.
To my surprise, though, I found that the lane curved sharply round to the right, giving him less distance to run, so that when I tried hard to get by him, having given up all idea of hiding, I found that he had jumped over into the lane before I came up. Then to my horror, as I turned a sharp corner, I came straight upon him, he being evidently quite as much surprised as I at the suddenness of our encounter—the winding of the lane and the height of the hedges having kept us out of sight the one of the other, until the very last moment, when we came face to face, both dusty, hot, weary, and excited as two lads could be, and for the moment neither of us moved.
I don’t know how it was that I did not try to run off by the fields in another direction, but it seems to me now that I was stirred by the same savage instincts as an ostrich, who, seeing any hunter riding as if to cut him off, immediately forgets that there is plenty of room behind, and gallops across his pursuer’s track, instead of right away.
As I ran panting up, the lad stopped short, and my eyes falling upon my bundle, a new set of thoughts came flashing across my mind, making me forget my pursuer in the high road.
As for the lad, he stood staring at me in a shifty way, and it soon became evident that he gave me as much credit for chasing him as I did him for chasing me.
He was the first to speak, and calling up the low cunning of his nature, he advanced a step or two, saying:
“I say, you’d better hook it; that, gent’s a-looking for you.”