Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures

by S. R. Crockett

"Out with it!" said the minister.

So it was on the whole a good day for them. And it was not till late in the evening that misfortune again befell them. Vara's hands were usually so full of Gavin that she had little thought for anything else. But at one resting place she put her hand into her pocket and her heart stood still because she failed to find the slim coins upon which she had put her trust. She felt the pennies, but not the shilling or the sixpence. She laid Gavin down on the grass and turned the pocket inside out. There was nothing whatever there. But Vara found instead a little slit in the lining, and the thought of her great loss, together with what it meant to them all, turned her faint and sick.

"The man might just as well have had them, after all," she said.

Night fell with them still upon the road. They had found no friendly shelter, and they seemed to be alone on the wide moor, through which the road ran unfenced, like a tangle of string which has been loosely thrown down. Hugh Boy cried bitterly to be allowed to lie down. Vara looked about her anxiously and long. But she could see nothing but the wild moorish hilltops girdling the horizon, too like one another to give her any idea of the direction in which a habited house might lie. She only saw the slow twilight of midsummer in the north creeping down over the brown moors, and in the moist hollows of the bogs shallow pools of mist gathering.

For the distance, the sound of a voice was borne in the still air.

"Hurley, hurley, hie away hame!" it said. And Vara went to the top of a heathery knowe and called loudly. But only the moorbirds, making ready for bed, answered her. They flew round, circling and complaining, especially the peewits, which, being reassured by the small size of the three, came almost offensively near.

Boy Hugh filled his pockets with stones to drive them away. He also got out his whip. He had heard of the Babes in the Wood, and, being a sensible boy, he did not want any Robin Redbreast nonsense. It was not that he so much objected to die, but he felt the humiliation of being covered with leaves by the whaups. He complained bitterly to Vara, who was preoccupied with Gavin, that the Drabble had stolen from him the iron barrel of the pistol which Cleg Kelly had given him. Had it not been for that felony, they would not now have found themselves defenceless in that wild place.

"Boy Hugh thinks there's sure to be lions an' teegers here!" he said.