[CHAPTER V]
DRIVEN FORTH
LIKE one in a bad dream, Tad stood and stared at the placard. There was something very ominous and startling, on coming for the first time into this little town, to find his secret, his story there before him.
"Ay there it is!" he muttered. "My name and my clothes and all, so as the perlice should be sure to catch me. Catch me? Ay, and so they may yet."
At the thought, he shrank into the shadow of the wall.
"Why, here I am, with my big head, and thin body, and I'm wearin' of that very grey suit and cap, and a bobby might just step out and nab me this minute. Now what can I do," Tad asked himself, "to put the bobbies off the scent and make 'em think there's no Edward Poole in the place?"
Musing intently, the lad had moved stealthily away, and turned down a narrow, dark street, where he was less likely to be noticed. Once round the corner, he quickened his pace until he came to a little archway leading into some kind of a court. Here he undid his satchel, produced from it an old snuff-coloured suit that he used to wear when doing dirty work, and proceeded to exchange his tidy grey clothes for the shabby brown, packing the former carefully away in the satchel. He turned his cap inside out, and put it on well forward, shading his eyes; then turning his frayed collar up round his throat, he emerged from the sheltering archway.
The clouds had been gathering for the last hour or two, and now the rain began to fall, the lamps were dim and blurred, and the lad's courage revived. A big cookshop attracted him by its savoury odours, which made the hungry boy's mouth water. While he was gazing in and wondering which of all the good things he should choose if he could afford a hearty supper, two men came up, and also paused for a look.
Tad, feeling fairly safe in his old brown clothes, did not move away at once, and had not indeed taken much notice of them or their conversation, until a sentence—a single sentence—of their talk, turned him faint and sick with fear, and set him trembling all over.
"I say, Bill, they say there's more partic'lars now about that there scoundrel of a boy. You know which I mean—the artful young chap what run off with the baby; disappeared with his poor little half-brother."