against his cheek. Then he
began to look, with the air of a hunted beast, for some means of
escape. The two boys got up whimpering, more frightened than hurt, and
at the sight of their tears the merriment of the rest turned instantly
to anger. The boys remembered suddenly that their eel was gone, and
crowded round the man, yelling continuously, "Where's our ale? Where's
our ale? You've stole our ale." And the ragged man with drooping
shoulders and white scared face slunk along the fence under the road,
looking for a weak place by which he might scramble out of the field.
At last he found one and made a bound to climb up it; but the bank was
too steep and he fell back. The boys seeing that he was afraid of them
began to raise the cry of thief, or, as they called it, thafe. Half a
dozen of them ran round to the gate of the meadow to cut him off, while
the rest yelled round him like a pack of baying hounds, with cries of
"Thafe! Thafe! Thafe!" The man made a second attempt to climb up the
bank, and this time reached the top, where he lay for a few moments
sprawling, amid the jeers of his tormentors; and Tommy Fry, who was the
scapegrace of the village, picked up a clod of earth and threw it at
him. The clod, which was full of little stones, struck him full on the
cheek and drew blood. The man gave a little whine of pain, and
struggled quickly to his feet; but the boys were in the road before
him, and, worse than that, the women hearing the cry of thief were
hastening to the spot; for they thought of clean clothes that might be
drying on their garden hedges, and, if there be a creature which
villagers dread and detest, it is a tramp. The man looked fearfully up
and down the road, and saw that it was blocked on every side by
hurrying women and children; and then sinking down by the roadside he
buried his face in his hands and blubbered aloud, while the squirrel,
fully as frightened as he was, nestled close to his bleeding cheek.

Then there was a babel of voices, scolding, complaining and accusing,
but the man sat blubbering and took no heed. Two or three children
were ready to start to fetch the men from the harvest-field, and one
old crone was declaiming with great eloquence on the iniquity of
tramps, when a strange woman suddenly forced her way through the crowd
to the sobbing man and took him by the arm. Her sun-bonnet was so tied
before her face that they could see little of it but two eyes, which
gleame