The Water-Babies | Page 9

minnow.
But when he got into the wood, he found it a very different sort of place
from what he had fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of
rhododendrons, and found himself at once caught in a trap. The boughs
laid hold of his legs and arms, poked him in his face and his stomach,
made him shut his eyes tight (though that was no great loss, for he
could not see at best a yard before his nose); and when he got through
the rhododendrons, the hassock-grass and sedges tumbled him over,
and cut his poor little fingers afterwards most spitefully; the birches
birched him as soundly as if he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over
the face too (which is not fair swishing as all brave boys will agree);
and the lawyers tripped him up, and tore his shins as if they had sharks'
teeth--which lawyers are likely enough to have.
"I must get out of this," thought Tom, "or I shall stay here till
somebody comes to help me--which is just what I don't want."
But how to get out was the difficult matter. And indeed I don't think he
would ever have got out at all, but have stayed there till the cock-robins
covered him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head against a

wall.
Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant, especially if it is
a loose wall, with the stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered one
hits you between the eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful
stars. The stars are very beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they go
in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and the pain which
comes after them does not. And so Tom hurt his head; but he was a
brave boy, and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall
the cover would end; and up it he went, and over like a squirrel.
And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors, which the country
folk called Harthover Fell--heather and bog and rock, stretching away
and up, up to the very sky.
Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow--as cunning as an old Exmoor
stag. Why not? Though he was but ten years old, he had lived longer
than most stags, and had more wits to start with into the bargain.
He knew as well as a stag, that if he backed he might throw the hounds
out. So the first thing he did when he was over the wall was to make
the neatest double sharp to his right, and run along under the wall for
nearly half a mile.
Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, and the gardener,
and the ploughman, and the dairymaid, and all the hue- and-cry
together, went on ahead half a mile in the very opposite direction, and
inside the wall, leaving him a mile off on the outside; while Tom heard
their shouts die away in the woods and chuckled to himself merrily.
At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to the bottom of it, and
then he turned bravely away from the wall and up the moor; for he
knew that he had put a hill between him and his enemies, and could go
on without their seeing him.
But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went.
She had kept ahead of every one the whole time; and yet she neither
walked nor ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, while

her feet twinkled past each other so fast that you could not see which
was foremost; till every one asked the other who the strange woman
was; and all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that she must be
in league with Tom.
But when she came to the plantation, they lost sight of her; and they
could do no less. For she went quietly over the wall after Tom, and
followed him wherever he went. Sir John and the rest saw no more of
her; and out of sight was out of mind.
And now Tom was right away into the heather, over just such a moor
as those in which you have been bred, except that there were rocks and
stones lying about everywhere, and that, instead of the moor growing
flat as he went upwards, it grew more and more broken and hilly, but
not so rough but that little Tom could jog along well enough, and find
time, too, to stare about at the strange place, which was like a new
world to him.
He saw great spiders there, with crowns and crosses marked on their
backs, who sat in the middle