Then presently he dropped back into a walking pace, pretended to see something in the hedge, stopped and took a sidelong look at the young policeman.
He was coming along with earnest strides; every movement of his suggested a stealthy hurry!
Bealby trotted and then becoming almost frank about it ran. He took to his heels.
From the first it was not really an urgent chase; it was a stalking rather than a hunt, because the young policeman was too young and shy and lacking in confidence really to run after a boy without any definite warrant for doing so. When anyone came along he would drop into a smart walk and pretend not to be looking at Bealby but just going somewhere briskly. And after two miles of it he desisted, and stood for a time watching a heap of mangold wurzel directly and the disappearance of Bealby obliquely, and then when Bealby was quite out of sight he turned back thoughtfully towards his proper place.
On the whole he considered he was well out of it. He might have made a fool of himself....
And yet,—five pounds reward!
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER
§ 1
Bealby was beginning to realize that running away from one’s situation and setting up for oneself is not so easy and simple a thing as it had appeared during those first days with the caravan. Three things he perceived had arisen to pursue him, two that followed in the daylight, the law and the tramp, and a third that came back at twilight, the terror of the darkness. And within there was a hollow faintness, for the afternoon was far advanced and he was extremely hungry. He had dozed away the early afternoon in the weedy corner of a wood. But for his hunger I think he would have avoided Crayminster.
Within a mile of that place he had come upon the ‘Missing’ notice again stuck to the end of a barn. He had passed it askance, and then with a sudden inspiration returned and tore it down. Somehow with the daylight his idea of turning King’s Evidence against the tramp had weakened. He no longer felt sure.