Previous - Next

pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from a
stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly
used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water,
up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen
cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful
round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie,
but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that
was put away so carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a
corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that
it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some
time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's
tools. Then, I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it,
and ran for the misty marshes.


Chapter 3

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on
the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying
there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like
a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig
and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the
marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post
directing people to our village - a direction which they never
accepted, for they never came there - was invisible to me until I
was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it
dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom
devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at
me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and
dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they
cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie!
Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring
out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Holloa,
young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on - who even had
to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air - fixed me so
obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such
an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him,
"I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon
which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose,
and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his
tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast
I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed
riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was
running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for
I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an
old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him regularly

Previous - Next