little head carried within it too bitter
memories of hungry days, and too many impressions of the shifts and
contrivances by which fortune's votaries bamboozle from that fickle
Goddess a meagre living, to adventure on the journey unprepared.
Moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Moss of the Whitmansworth Union were not
unkind, and meals were regular, so he did not run away from the house
that had opened its doors to him and an exhausted mother six months
ago. But he still dreamt of London as the desideratum of his fondest
hopes, and that, in spite of a black terror crouching there and
carefully nurtured by the poor mother in the days of their wanderings.
He saw it all through a haze of people and experiences, of friends and
foes, and it was the Place of Liberty.

Therefore, when escape was possible from the somewhat easy rule of
the Union, he hurried away to the mile-stone on the "Great Road," as
it was called about here. The stone with its clear distinct black
lettering, seemed to bring him nearer London, and he would spend his
time contentedly flinging pebbles into the river of dust at his feet,
or planning out in his active little mind what he would do when old
Granny Jane's prophecy came true.

There was a wide strip of turf on each side of the road bejewelled
with poppies and daisies, matted with yellow and white bedstraws,
carpeted with clovers, and over all lay a coating of fine chalky dust,
legacy of passing cart and carriage.

The boy was very hot and very dusty, and a little sleepy. He lay on
his back drumming his heels on the turf and watching an exuberant lark
tower up into the sky above him. He was not unmindful of the lark's
song, but he vaguely wondered if a well-thrown stone could travel as
far as the dark mounting speck.

"It's a year ago I am sure since that old woman told me my fortune,"
he said, suddenly sitting up. "I wonder if it will come true. Mother
said it was nonsense."

It was a lonely stretch of road. The mile-stone was on the summit of a
rise and the ground sloped away on his right to a reach of green
water-meadow through which a chalky trout-stream wandered, and the red
roof of an old mill showed through a group of silvery poplars and
willows. On the other side of the road were undulating fields that
dwindled from sparse cultivation to bare down-land. There was no sign
of any house except the distant mill, but directly over the summit of
the hill, happily hidden, an ugly little red-brick mushroom o