As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my
little window was shot with grey, I got up and went
down stairs; every board upon the way, and every crack
in every board, calling after me, “Stop thief!”
and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry,
which was far more abundantly supplied than usual,
owing to the season, I was very much alarmed, by a
hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought
I caught, when my back was half turned, winking.
I had no time for verification, no time for selection,
no time for anything, for I had no time to spare.
I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half
a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief
with my last night’s slice), some brandy from
a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle
I had secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid,
Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting
the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard),
a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful
round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away
without the pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a
shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully
in a covered earthen ware dish in a corner, and I
found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that
it was not intended for early use, and would not be
missed for some time.
There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with
the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, and
got a file from among Joe’s tools. Then,
I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night,
shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.
Chapter 3
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had
seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window,
as if some goblin had been crying there all night,
and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare
grass, like a coarser sort of spiders’ webs;
hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.
On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist
was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing
people to our village — a direction which they
never accepted, for they never came there —
was invisible to me until I was quite close under
it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped,
it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom
devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes,
so that instead of my running at everything, everything
seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable
to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks
came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried
as plainly as could be, “A boy with Somebody-else’s
pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon
me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,
and steaming out of their nostrils, “Holloa,
young thief!” One black ox, with a white cravat
on — who even had to my awakened conscience
something of a clerical air — fixed me so obstinately
with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such
an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered
out to him, “I couldn’t help it, sir!
It wasn’t for myself I took it!” Upon
which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out
of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs
and a flourish of his tail.
