had begged a bit of warm breakfast in the morning at an outlying house,
and at the hour when he caught sight of his pursuer he was lying under
the edge of a wood, lunching upon the gingerbread Keziah had provided,
and beginning to reckon up soberly what was to be done.

His first impulse had been simply to escape a good flogging and the
taunts of the boys. He had shunned the direct Ashfield turnpike, because
he knew pursuit--if there were any--would lead off in that direction.
From the river road he might diverge into that, if he chose. But if he
went home,--what then? The big gray eyes of Aunt Eliza he knew would
greet him at the door, looking thunderbolts. Adele, and maybe Rose,
would welcome him in kindly way enough,--but very pityingly, when the
Doctor should summon him quietly into his low study. For they knew, and
he knew, that the big rod would presently come down from its place by
the Major's sword,--a rod that never came down, except it had some swift
office to perform. And next day, perhaps,--whatever might be the kindly
pleadings of Adele, (thus far he flattered himself,) the old horse
Dobbins would be in harness to carry him back to Bolton Hill, where of a
surety some new birch was already in pickle for the transgressor. Or, if
this mortification were spared, there would be the same weary round of
limitations and exactions from which he longed to break away. And as he
sits there under the lee of the wood,--seeing presently Brummem's heavy
cavalry wheel and retire from pursuit,--the whole scene of his last
altercation, in the study at Ashfield drifts before him again clear as
day.

"I'm bad," (this was the way he broke out upon the old man after the
usual discipline,)--"I know I'm bad, and all the worse for the way you
try to make me good. There's Phil Elderkin, now,--you say to me, over
and over, 'See Phil, he doesn't do so.' But he does,--only his father
knows he does; he a'n't punished, if he isn't in at nine o'clock for
prayers, without telling where he's been. It's all underhanded with me,
and with Phil it's all aboveboard. I have to read proper books that I
don't care a copper about, and so I steal 'em into my chamber; and Aunt
Eliza, prying about, finds 'Arabian Nights' hid under the sheets; and
then there's a row! Phil reads 'em; and there's nobody forever looking
over his shoulder to see what he's reading. I think Phil's father trusts
him more than you do me."

"But, my son, you tell me you are bad