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CHAPTER II

I am Whipped Up

The moment I was out of sight of Nathan I sat down on a heap of gravel by the roadside and began to devour the great hunch of bacon-and-bread.

I was ravenous; hunger had been plaguing me for hours. Only a sorry breakfast had been given me, and dinner had been withheld until I should perfectly know my lesson. With what a relish, then, I ate the coarse bread, the fat and “reesty” bacon! But it was a heavy meal for a lad of fourteen, accustomed to meagre if more dainty fare, and I felt very sleepy after it. As by this time the afternoon was glaring and sultry, the heat and my weariness combined with the meal to invite me to nap. Tying up my diminished bundle, I made a pillow of it, and nestling into the warm and yielding sandy gravel, in five minutes I was fast asleep.

Five minutes afterwards–as it seemed to me–I was roused by the touch of a whiplash on my ill-defended shins. Dazed and startled I sat up, rubbing my eyes and blinking. By the length of the shadows on the yellow road I could tell that I had slept for hours.

“Why, it must be five o’clock and after!” I was thinking, when “swish” came the whiplash, gently curling round my legs again.

“Is the boy deaf? Is the boy dumb? Is the boy a fool? Now then, boy, now then, boy, what are you doing there–hey, boy, hey?” was barked at me in sharp, quick tones.

The words came from a short, stout, funny-looking old gentleman, sitting in a ramshackle old gig, drawn by a fat sleepy-looking old pony.

“Pills and powders! what do you mean by it–hey, boy, hey? Sleeping on a gravel-heap in the bare sun! Catch your young death of sunstroke! Come off it; come off it this instant, young dog! Up you jump, or I’ll tickle those ragged breeches of yours with whip-cord, hey!” said the short, stout, funny-looking gentleman in short, sharp barks, with a warning flick of the lash in the air around my head.

I did not hesitate. I jumped up, shouldered my stick and my pitiful little bundle, and stood silent and watchful, with my feet in the ditch by the side of the road.

“Is the boy deaf? Is the boy dumb, I say?” barked the old gentleman. “Is the boy a fool, hey? Hasn’t the young dog a tongue? Lungs and lancets! but I’ll make him speak!”

“Flick, flack!” went the warning whip again.

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