n and was in the garden at sunrise the morning
that I ran away. I had made my plans carefully, and carried them out, so
far with success.

Including the old miser's bequest which his lawyer had paid, there were
thirteen pounds to my name in the town savings-bank, and this sum I had
drawn out to begin life with. I wrapped a five-pound note in a loving
letter to Jem, and put both into the hymn-book on his shelf--I knew it
would not be opened till Sunday. Very few runaways have as much as eight
pounds to make a start with: and as one could not be quite certain how
my father would receive Jem's confession, I thought he might be glad of
a few pounds of his own, and I knew he had spent his share of the
miser's money long ago.

I meant to walk to a station about seven miles distant, and there take
train for Liverpool. I should be clumsy indeed, I thought, if I could
not stow away on board some vessel, as hundreds of lads had done before
me, and make myself sufficiently useful to pay my passage when I was
found out.

When I got into the garden I kicked my foot against something in the
grass. It was my mother's little gardening-fork. She had been tidying
her pet perennial border, and my father had called her hastily, and she
had left it half finished, and had forgotten the fork. A few minutes
more or less were of no great importance to me, for it was very early,
so I finished the border quite neatly, and took the fork indoors.

I put it in a corner of the hall where the light was growing stronger
and making familiar objects clear. In a house like ours and amongst
people like us, furniture was not chopped and changed and decorated as
it is now. The place had looked like this ever since I could remember,
and it would look like this tomorrow morning, though my eyes would not
see it. I stood stupidly by the hall table where my father's gloves lay
neatly one upon the other beside his hat. I took them up, almost
mechanically, and separated them, and laid them together again finger to
finger, and thumb to thumb, and held them with a stupid sort of feeling,
as if I could never put them down and go away.

What would my father's face be like when he took them up this very
morning to go out and look for me? and when--oh when!--should I see his
face again?

I began to feel what one is apt to learn too late, that in childhood one
takes the happiness of home for granted, and kicks against the pricks of
its grievances, not having felt t