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as I was going by, and who, addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad

ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’--in allusion, I

have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had

not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not

like a job.

‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.

‘To move a box,’ I answered.

‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.

I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted

him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.

‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and

directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on

wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could

do to keep pace with the donkey.

There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about

the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much

like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room

I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart.

Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my

landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so

I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a

minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The

words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my

box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out

of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the

place appointed.

Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my

pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and

though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very

much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the

chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my

mouth into his hand.

‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a

frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a-going to bolt,

are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’

‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much

frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’

‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to

the pollis.’

‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.

The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me

against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity

between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped

into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to

the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.

I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out

with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly

escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I

lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip,

now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into

somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by

fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time

be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where

he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never

stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on

the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the

retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the

night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.

CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION

For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the

way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the

donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon

collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent

Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish

image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep,

quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with

hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.

It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat

resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When

I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in

my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no

notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had

been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.

But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I

am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday

night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture

to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in

a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as

fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was

written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought, and that

the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master

of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and

as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from

the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show

what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful

disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.

My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here

might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up

the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my

arm, and came back to the shop door.

‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’

Mr. Dolloby--Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least--took the

waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into

the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers,

spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up

against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:

‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’

‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.

‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on

this here little weskit.’

‘Would eighteenpence be?’--I hinted, after some hesitation.

Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my

family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’

This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed

upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to

rob his family on my account. My circumstances being so very pressing,

however, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr.

Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good

night, and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the

poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much.

Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that

I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair

of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that

trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed.

Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young

man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no

very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my

ninepence in my pocket.

A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to

carry into execution. This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my

old school, in a corner where there used to be a haystack. I imagined

it would be a kind of company to have the boys, and the bedroom where

I used to tell the stories, so near me: although the boys would know

nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.

I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came

climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some

trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found a haystack

in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall,

and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent

within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down,

without a roof above my head!

Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom

house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night--and I

dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room;

and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips,

looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above

me. When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling

stole upon me that made me get up, afraid of I don’t know what, and walk

about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in

the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very

heavy, I lay down again and slept--though with a knowledge in my sleep

that it was cold--until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of

the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that

Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out

alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained,

perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence

in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his

good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away

from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the

long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was

one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me

the wayfarer I was now, upon it.

What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth!

In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on; and I met

people who were going to church; and I passed a church or two where the

congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the

sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the

porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead,

glowering at me going by. But the peace and rest of the old Sunday

morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference. I felt

quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair. But for the

quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty,

weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly think I

should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went

before me, and I followed.

I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight

road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. I

see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester,

footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper.

One or two little houses, with the notice, ‘Lodgings for Travellers’,

hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence

I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I

had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and

toiling into Chatham,--which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of

chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed

like Noah’s arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery

overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I

lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s

footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys

at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until

morning.

Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the

beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on

every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling

that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any

strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale

of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off,

that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began

a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.

It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in

second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the

look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had,

hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and

all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and

walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.

This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,

and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers.

At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a

dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the

palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have

overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,

and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so

many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the

world.

Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened

rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was

descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was

not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all

covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it,

and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look

at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His

bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in

the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect

of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.

‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous